I don't think the Barbara Vines are mysteries in any sense. The Barbara Vine is much more slowly paced. It is a much more in-depth, searching sort of book; it doesn't necessarily have a murder in it.

My favourite book - 'The Good Soldier' by Ford Madox Ford, which I have read about 20 times - is different from my favourite author, who is Iris Murdoch. I find her books exciting and unputdownable. Her characters are so carefully studied and in-depth; I love that.

'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.

So we're better off to have damaged green vines than we would be to have a dead frozen vine.

What I mind in modern society very much is the awful lack of grammar.