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Broadly speaking, there are two approaches to crime: the realistically detailed police procedural, usually grim and downbeat, and the more left-field, joyous theatre of ideas in which past masters once specialised. Knowing that I would never be able to handle the former, I set about reviving the latter.

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

Crimes sometimes shock us too much; vices almost always too little.

Squeeze human nature into the straitjacket of criminal justice and crime will appear.

I think crime writing is my link with trying to preserve a sort of order.

The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you're dealing with a multitude of linked characters, strands, themes and red herrings - and you need to try to control these unruly elements and weave them into a pattern.

Using MO to link crimes can be problematic.

If we were really tough on crime, we'd do more to stop it from happening in the first place.

There's a simple way to solve the crime problem: obey the law; punish those who do not.

We haven't had crime writers, and for a long time in the Republic, we didn't seem to have a crime problem as such.