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If the book is a mystery to its author as she's writing, inevitably it's going to be a mystery to the reader as he or she reads it.

A locked-room problem lies at the heart of my new novel, 'In The Morning I'll Be Gone,' in which an RUC detective has to find out whether a publican's daughter who fell off a table in a bar that was locked from the inside was in fact murdered.

There's a market for mysteries for adults. That feeling of opening a book and delving inside and not coming out until you've closed the book.

I did know that the book would end with a mind-boggling trial, but I didn't know exactly how it would turn out. I like a little suspense when I am writing, too.

What I do is write, and I try to write as closely as I can into what I call 'the mystery.'

Nobody reads a mystery to get to the middle. They read it to get to the end. If it's a letdown, they won't buy anymore. The first page sells that book. The last page sells your next book.

Writing a mystery is like drawing a picture and then cutting it into little pieces that you offer to your readers one piece at a time, thus allowing them the chance to put the jigsaw puzzle together by the end of the book.

To write a good mystery you have to know where it will end before you can decide where it will begin... and I've always known where it will end.