I never make notes; just a few small details when I'm writing, but nothing much. The plot is never written down. I will tell the story to myself, but I won't plan it. I'll speak the narrative in my head for a while.

'The Chimney Sweeper's Boy' began differently from any previous book I'd written. It actually derives from a story a friend - the novel's dedicatee, Patrick Maher - told me.

[Publishers Weekly said] 13 Steps Down ... all her trademark virtues: vivid characters, a plot addictive as crack and a sense of place unequaled in crime fiction.

In our modern age, there are writers who have heaped scorn on the very idea of the primacy of story. I'd rather warm my hands on a sunlit ice floe than try to coax fire from the books they carve from glaciers.

People do sometimes ask me some really idiotic questions: 'Is your husband afraid of you putting arsenic in his food?' I replied that I have never written a book about poison, ever.

I don't make any notes, but I do know where to find things. Suppose I need to know where Wexford first talked about his love of the countryside or where he quotes Larkin or what was the beginning of his hatred of racism or where he first encountered domestic violence; I would be able to find it straight away.