One of the things that I love about crime novels is that you can turn the volume all the way up. If I can make somebody blow their subway stop, I win.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The best crime novels are all based on people keeping secrets. All lying - you may think a lie is harmless, but you put them all together and there's a calamity.
One of the surprising things I hadn't expected when I decided to write crime fiction is how much you are expected to be out in front of the public. Some writers aren't comfortable with that. I don't have a problem with that.
I just really like the verve and muscle of good crime fiction, the narrative punch of it. The underlying principle of good crime fiction is an insistence on a kind of root democracy. I've always responded to that notion.
You can, I think, have a quiet and steady protagonist and not run the risk of terminal dullness as long as exciting things happen to them and around them, and crime is the ideal genre for making this come about.
I don't really consider any of my novels 'crime' novels.
In everything I've written, the crime has always just been an occasion to write about other things. I don't have a picture of myself as writing crime novels. I like fairly strong narratives, but it's a way of getting a plot moving.
I'm a fast writer, and crime novels are easy to do. It's much harder to write a 1,000 word article, where everything has to be 100 per cent correct.
With crime fiction, you have to write a half-dozen before they catch on.
I'm not a good crime writer. I'm not good with plots... so I have to do something else.
I'm very critical of crime novels that use gratuitous violence to shock readers when it isn't necessary. If that's all you have to offer as a writer, perhaps you're in the wrong job.