Usually When I'm Trying To Establish Character,

We Don't Really Go In For Big Family Dinners, But Scottish People Are Famously Confrontational. It's A Cultural Thing, So Maybe We Don't Need To Have Them To Clear The Air. Also, Traditional Family Food Isn't As Nice Here So There's No Payoff For Traveling Hundreds Of Miles.

Journalism Is A Darwinian Process.

People Are Interested In Crime Fiction When They're Quite Distanced From Crime. People In Darfur Are Not Reading Murder Mysteries.

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.

My Upbringing Was Middle-class But My Parents' Families Were Both Working-class So I Had This Odd Combination Of Working-class Background But In A Privileged Position.