Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
London now has its own John Grisham.
I write slowly and get distracted a lot.
I've never read an ebook. Print every time.
I started performing as a stand-up comedian on my own in the mid-1990s.
A good agent will sometimes need to be a scrapper, and that's the one you want.
I was never a fan of cozy mysteries of anything set in the countryside, you know.
Crime is the biggest genre in libraries and in bookshops, and it is hugely varied.
All writers I know are readers first and foremost, and that's why you become a writer.
I discovered reading through libraries. I grew up in a house that wasn't brimming with books.
Whenever people ask where I get my sick and twisted ideas from, I reply, 'Just open your eyes.'
More than 100 years after he first appeared, Holmes remains the template for the fictional detective.
Life isn’t fair. Fair is somewhere you go to ride the dodgems and win a goldfish. (from Rush of Blood)
I think women tend to write about how violence feels, whereas men tend to write about what violence looks like.
What I usually do is hoard money - I accumulate as much as possible in the fear of not having enough to pay tax.
In the 1970s, there was a trend for all detectives on TV to have some quirk or gimmick, and this was often physical.
Having worked as both comedian and crime writer, the one thing I know is that both involve the delivery of a performance.
All you can hope for when you get a book adapted for TV is that you get a good actor and not some muppet off 'EastEnders.'
If the weather is nice, I play tennis, which is pretty much the only exercise that I do. I try to do that as much as I can.
The day a character becomes predictable is the day a writer should think about moving on - because the reader certainly will.
I read 'Jaws' and 'The Godfather' back to back one summer when I was 14 and was suddenly aware of how powerful fiction could be.
The problem with being a writer is that some readers tend to think that anything that comes out of a character's mouth is you talking.
The fact is that most crime novels contain a good many punchlines. They are just rather darker than the ones you might hear in a comedy club.
Crime fiction has always been what I wanted to read, so when I sat down to write my first book, it was naturally the way that I was going to go.
I wanted to write at school - to write funny stories which the teacher might ask me to read out to the class. It's all basically about showing off.
I could never gamble on stocks and shares because I saw my father get hurt that way - he lost quite a lot of money when the stock market collapsed in 2001.
I think it's very easy to disgust the reader with violence on the page - that's incredibly easy - but it's far harder to make a reader care about a character.
I admire writers such as Elmore Leonard who can nail a character in three or four lines of dialogue, so he doesn't need pages of back story or clumsy exposition.
When a crime writer thinks up a delicious twist, it is a great moment. Time to relax and take the rest of the day off. I do think that it can be overdone, however.
Like my fictional protagonist Tom Thorne, I love country. My tastes go back a bit further than his do, and I still listen to stuff from the late '70s and early '80s.
An actor's life is all about rejection. It's you they don't want; it's you who's too tall or too short or too fat. With stand-up, it doesn't matter what you look like.
I moved from acting to stand-up because castings are just about what you look like. It doesn't matter if you can act or not. In comedy, no one cares what you look like.
When I began to write, I was surprised at how little London had been used in crime fiction. Places such as Edinburgh or Oxford or L.A. seemed to have stronger identities.
If you're looking for an author who can deliver high-octane thrills every time and a character who is NOT to be messed with, you've found them. Zoë Sharp and Charlie Fox both kick ass.
While the subject matter of my novels could not be further removed from the stuff I used to trot out at the Comedy Store, the delivery of the material employs many of the same techniques.
I think readers' imaginations are far more powerful than anything you can put on a page and, therefore, can conjure up graphic images for themselves, which I think you just have to nudge them towards.
If something is crucial to the plot, then I'd better be sure I've got my facts straight. Readers of crime novels are smart and savvy, and they'll waste no time letting me know if there's a hole in my plot.
I've always slightly preferred Spade to Marlowe, probably just because I thought Hammett was cooler than Chandler. He was leftwing, his name shortened to Dash rather than Ray, and he didn't smoke a pipe or like cats.
It's heretical, I know, but I've never really been able to get on with Agatha Christie. She is, of course, a giant of the genre, but I never feel that she cared a great deal about the characters. Consequently, neither do I.
I often wonder, with my hand on my heart, if 'The Dying Hours' was made into the biggest movie franchise in history, would I pick up my pen again? Wouldn't I be happier spending the rest of my life travelling around with my wife?
I'm a city boy. I grew up in a big city, in Birmingham, and I want to write about a city. It's much richer tapestry for me than green fields. Fields and wild life make me feel ill. I don't like - I don't want to write about that stuff.
I find traveling anywhere very stressful. If I ever have to go on tour, I tend to find it all a bit too stressful. I am too much of a control freak with traveling, and nothing is ever on time. The one thing I can't stand is being late.
When you think of a great twist or a red herring or a way of misdirecting the reader, it is good, but you know that they are just tricks at the end of the day, and the way to keep interest is to write characters that people care about.
I am trying to give the best performance possible in 400 pages. I want readers to be scared; I want them to be moved. Entertainment doesn't necessarily mean something trivial, but it does mean people wanting to get to the end of a book.
You throw the kitchen sink at your early books. You put everything in there. It's like when you meet a new girlfriend or boyfriend, you tell them all your best stories. By the time you have been married for 10 years, they are crying, 'Shut up!'
My dad was a terrible father. Dreadful. But he had a very difficult childhood. He was fostered - he never knew who his father was. So he had a very different attitude to family and kids. I don't have any issues. I'm not suffering some secret angst.
As a writer, you're making a pact with the reader; you're saying, 'Look, I know and you know that if this book was really a murder investigation, it would be a thousand pages long and would be very dull, and you would be very unhappy with the ending.'
I'm completely absorbed by Peter Guralnick's definitive, two-part biography of Elvis Presley: 'Last Train To Memphis' and 'Careless Love.' Meticulously researched, this is a compelling mix of history, myth-busting, and, of course, some timeless music.
Part of the reason why Scandinavian crime has been so popular is the landscape. It is just so strong and alien. Although without taking anything away, you should probably also never discount the fact that blood does look particularly good against snow.
Of course there's pressure, and it's still there with every book. Each one is harder to write than the last, basically because you're always trying to write a better book. You won't always succeed, of course, but that has to be what you're shooting for.
I bought an insurance policy covering the inheritance tax my kids will have to pay when we die, which I thought was a good bit of forward thinking. And I always know I'm going to have enough for tax because I make sure I keep it back in my business account.