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There are crimes which become innocent and even glorious through their splendor, number and excess.

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

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.

The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant, clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them.

When a crime is committed, only the victim and the victim's close circle experience the event as pain, terror, death. To people hearing or reading about it, crime is a metaphor, a symbol of the ancient battles fought every day: evil versus good, chaos versus order.

The fact that a crime might have been committed with impunity in the past may make it seem more familiar and less gruesome, but surely does not give it any greater legitimacy.

Crime is a very hard genre to feminise. If you have a female protagonist she is going to be looking after her mum when she gets older; she is going to be worried about her brother and sister; she will be making a living while bringing up kids.

Crime is interesting. It's huge and fascinating, and it's what my business, TV and film, is largely based on. But the realities are tragic, and in crime drama you rarely see the pain of bereavement or any consequences. It's reduced to a chess game.

I'm not sure whay I've been drawn to this subject, except that murder is a subject that has always drawn people for as long as people have been telling stories.

Crimes are more often committed out of fear than wickedness. People live frightened, desperate lives.