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I know when I was here prosecuting homicides in the District of Columbia, one of the most effective units here was the cold case squad, which had on it FBI agents, as well as Metropolitan Police Department homicide detectives working together.

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.

I have to know the killer, the victim and the motive when I begin. Then I start to create the characters and see how the novel takes shape based on what these people are like.

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.

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.

'Criminal Intent' scripts are very good. Like others involved in 'Law & Order' stuff, I've come to appreciate the lack of 'soap,' if you will. The story dominates. You don't spend a lot of time with the psychological underpinnings of the police.

I think you have to look at these cold cases. If they're done properly, if the homicides are done properly, and everything's documented properly, you have a lot of concrete statements from those people that they would be able to look at them and refresh their memory.

Police forces collect information to be used in a public court to get people convicted. Security services gather information that does not necessarily lead to people being prosecuted and in many cases needs to remain confidential.