You have started with the classic Brighton Rock by Graham Greene, which contains many of these big themes.

This is the book that made me want to be a crime writer. I grew up in Brighton [an English seaside resort] in the 1950s and 60s and it was a thoroughly unpleasant place then, seedy and violent. It has changed dramatically in the last 25 years. The book has two really key things about it that were such a big influence on me. The first is that it has one of the most grabbing opening sentences ever written: “Hale knew, before he had been in Brighton three hours, that they meant to murder him.”

You just have to read on after that. And secondly, I grew up weaned on Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers and Sherlock Holmes and this was the first crime novel I came across where the central characters were the villains. They were the most important and interesting characters. You had someone like Pinkie, this teenage murderer, yet he is a devout Catholic who is obsessed with eternal damnation and sin and guilt. I just found the book absolutely extraordinary. I read it when I was 14 and said to myself: I want to write a crime novel one day that is 10% as good as this.

Why do you think it became such a classic? Was it just the characters?

I think it has stood the test of time because it is a real page-turner. It has got tremendous characters. There isn’t a dull person in the book. It is utterly riveting in evil and malevolence and in humanity. It is also universal. People around the world that don’t know Brighton read this book and still love it. Greene is an immensely compelling writer. He writes about big themes and he writes brilliant characters. Although the book is set in an English seaside resort it has got the themes of right and wrong, of guilt and religion and good versus evil.

Next up is Ed McBain’s thriller The Con Man.

This was another life-changing book for me. At the age of 14, in England in the early 1960s, I was steeped in the traditional, often slightly dull, crime novel culture. Then I picked up Con Man and I was just blown away. It is set in the 87th precinct of New York and was very different to the English tradition of the time of having a murder in the first chapter and then working back to find out who had done it. This book was a breath of fresh air. Let me read you the opening lines which have this energy to them:

“Everyone has a right to earn a living. That is the American way. You get up there and sweat and you make a buck. And you invest that buck in lemons and sugar. The water and ice, you get free. You’ve got yourself a little lemonade stand by the side of the road, and pretty soon you are pulling in five bucks a week…”

There is a lovely flow to his writing, which rapidly gets very dark. I think the best crime writers are the ones that really give you a sense of place, and I could smell and feel and breathe that district in New York long before I ever went there.

What about the pace in the book? How do you think good crime writers create the sense of pace throughout the book?

I think characters drive every story, because if you care about the characters you care about what happens next. I think that different writers have their own technique. I like short chapters, and I like to read books with short chapters because I tend to read at night in bed when I am tired, and if I pick up a book and I see 38 pages I think, “Oh shit, I will read it tomorrow.” But if I see it is only a few pages I am more likely to read it. Short punchy chapters are one big key to it. I have an imaginary card sitting beside my computer when I am writing that says, is this going to make the reader want to read the next sentence?