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

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.

Many who resort to crime ultimately can't read or write.

I don't really consider any of my novels 'crime' novels.

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

A crime is like a crack in reality, and it is the author's role to explore those cracks. As a writer, I like to see how they impinge on people.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

I suppose most crime writing is urban. There's not a lot... certainly not in Australia, people don't often set books in the countryside.

The book that convinced me I wanted to be a writer was 'Crime and Punishment'. I put the thing down after reading it in a fever over two or three days... I said, 'If this is what a book can be, then that is what I want to do.'

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.