No Two Things The Same,

I Have This Fantasy. I'm Walking Past A Bookshop And I Click My Fingers And All My Books Go Blank. So I Can Start Again And Get It Right.

Yes, This Is What I Thought Adulthood Would Be, A Kind Of Long Indian Summer, A State Of Tranquility, Of Calm Incuriousness, With Nothing Left Of The Barely Bearable Raw Immediacy Of Childhood, All The Things Solved That Had Puzzled Me When I Was Small, All Mysteries Settled, All Questions Answered, And The Moments Dripping Away, Unnoticed Almost, Drip By Golden Drip, Toward The Final, Almost Unnoticed, Quietus.

I Am The Worst Judge Of My Books.

Most Crime Fiction, No Matter How 'hard-boiled' Or Bloodily Forensic, Is Essentially Sentimental, For Most Crime Writers Are Disappointed Romantics.

I'm A Hopeless 19th-century Romantic.