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All novels are about crime. You'd be hard pressed to find any novel that does not have an element of crime. I don't see myself as a crime novelist, but there are crimes in my books. That's the nature of storytelling, if you want to reflect the real world.

My books are never about the crimes. They are about how the characters react to the crimes.

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.

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.

There is a very conservative element of crime writers that don't recognise what I do is crime fiction.

I wasn't that into crime novels at all, but a friend introduced me to the work of Jim Thompson - I loved all his books.

I couldn't ever write a straight crime novel: there'd be an intrusion of weirdness at some point.

I'm not at all upset to be considered a crime novelist. But for me, it's never really about the crime or the violence. I'm much more interested in exploring issues.

I have been reading crime books ever since I was a child, but I had never tried to write one.

Horror and supernatural novels give you a lot of what you look for in a crime novel, just with a twist that was very fresh for me as a reader.