Hardcover books are fairly expensive these days and to read one requires a significant commitment of time in our busy society. So I want to make sure that when readers buy one of my books they get something they're familiar with.

Generally my typical books have lots of twists and turns a big surprise ending and then usually another surprise at the end and ideally, as in Garden of Beasts, we get to the very end and we find at the last few pages that there's yet another surprise.

To answer that I have to describe what I think is my responsibility as a thriller writer: To give my readers the most exciting roller coaster ride of a suspense story I can possibly think of.

If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say.

But I have a list of books that I want to read before I die, and whenever I get time to read something that isn't a script, I'll read something from that.

You think publishing is tough but the music world is ten times tougher.