Quote

Forensics I've always found absolutely fascinating. Anything to do with clues. And checking things out and solving.

The thing is that quite a few of my books have ended up as they are because of conversations I've had over the years with forensic scientists.

I read true crime books, and I read when people do case studies of stuff. I'm into books like that. Case studies or forensics or murder - all that good stuff.

Meeting forensic patients for the first time could occasionally be an unnerving experience. They often came across as mild and gentle people, but the details of the crimes were harrowing in the extreme.

Certainly going back to Sherlock Holmes we have a tradition of forensic science featured in detective stories.

I read a lot of books about psychopaths. I read a wonderful book Amy Hempel gave me about the guy who created criminal profiling - a fascinating book, 'Mind Hunter.'

What gives my books authenticity is that I actually do what it is I'm writing about. I think the fact that I am in the autopsy room, I go to the crime scene and I do work in the lab gives my books this flavor that otherwise they wouldn't have.

As a biographer, I try to uncover the adventures and personalities behind each character I research. Once my character and I have reached an understanding, then I begin the detective work reading old books, old letters, old newspapers, and visiting the places where my subject lived. Often I turn up surprises, and of course, I pass them on.

I didn't invent forensic science and medicine. I just was one of the first people to recognize how interesting it is.

I'm English enough to feel something of a gut-reaction to modernism, to continental philosophising and anything that smacks of a refusal to pay attention to the forensics: the empirical facts on the ground.