I don’t have dry seasons, because I don’t allow them.

If you’ll think about various series you’ve read, can you think of any instance in which, say, the tenth volume of the series is notably better than the first nine? I can’t.

When I write a book, I’m making it the best book I can.

I do want to write about Jane Whitefield again, but only when I have a good enough idea – something I’ve figured out about her that’s news and that’s worth a reader’s time.

Bombs were not just weapons. They were something more, expressions of the bomber’s thoughts about you, his predictions of your behavior – what you would see, even what you would think and feel. He’d staged a presentation designed to fool you. He didn’t even know your name, but you were the one he was really after. Bombs were acts of murder, but they were also jokes on you, riddles the bomber hoped were too tough for you, chances for you to pick wrong when it was almost impossible to pick right.

There are days when I intentionally don’t write. For instance, I never write when I’m traveling, because travel is a situation where I can learn more by looking and listening than by working.

The characters you refer to as predatory and unsavory are useful. They’re the ones who make a novel into a thriller. They’re active, and most of the common virtues, the signs of a good person, are not.

I don’t think the problem is that people don’t read enough mystery books, but that people don’t read.

All writers are mimics, and I’m not interested in picking up somebody else’s style or voice.

I do have to earn a living, so I’m conscious of probable reactions from readers, but the most important one is still the awareness that if I’m not enjoying a story, the reader won’t either.