By that time, Rebus will be 59 and, for a CID officer, he is getting fairly long in the tooth. They will have brought in the smoking ban by 2007, so he will definitely want to retire to somewhere in the sun for a drink and a smoke.

I don't think I have one particular favourite writer. I have many whose works I will always buy or reread - Muriel Spark, Anthony Powell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ruth Rendell, James Ellroy, William McIlvanney, Kate Atkinson, John Burnside, Louise Welsh, Iain Banks.

My first novel was turned down by half a dozen publishers. And even after having published five or six books, I wasn't making enough money to live on, and was beginning to think I'd have to give up the dream of being a full-time writer.

A lot of writers, especially crime writers, have an image that we think we're trying to keep up with. You've got to be seen as dark and slightly dangerous. But I'm not like that and I've realised that I don't need to put that on. People will buy the books whether they see a photo of you dressed in black or not.

You wouldn't think you could kill an ocean, would you? But we'll do it one day. That's how negligent we are.

My father was a slave to capitalist ideology. He didn't know what he was doing."
"You mean you went to an expensive school?