Your first book, A Dance at the Slaughterhouse by Lawrence Block, is all about the sex for sale in the underworld.

Yes. I have to say, despite what I just said about thrillers, that this is probably less of a thriller than some of my other choices. Lawrence Block is an American writer who is very much influenced by earlier crime writers like Raymond Chandler, and he has written a number of different books. But the series that I really like, and that has always been a great influence on me, has been his New York PI series about a guy called Matt Scudder. Block started writing them in the 70s and he is still writing them now, and Matt Scudder has gone from a boozer in his late 20s/early 30s into a wiser, more laidback coffee drinker in his 60s.

The book that really stood out for me in this excellent series is A Dance at the Slaughterhouse, in which Scudder is hired to find out whether a guy has murdered his wife or not. Basically the man and his wife were supposedly ambushed in their apartment by a couple of burglars who they disturbed after a night out. The man was beaten and his wife was murdered. The wife’s brother suspects that there is something amiss and thinks that the husband is responsible, so he hires Scudder to look into it and we soon find ourselves in the real dark underbelly of New York.

He stumbles across a snuff film and the possibility that there’s a group of killers out in the city hunting down people and filming their deaths for their own sexual satisfaction. It really is a dark, dark book that is very pacy and stayed with me long after I had read it. The sign of a really good thriller is that you want to read it again, and I’ve read this one three times even though I know exactly what happens. In fact, talking to you reminds me that I’m due a read of it again.

That is a good sign. So tell me about your next book, Tell No One by Harlan Coben, which sounds like a very tense thriller and is all about a doctor losing (or is it finding) his wife?

This is one of those classic thrillers, and it’s brilliantly plotted. It starts with a husband and wife celebrating the anniversary of their first kiss in their lakeside holiday home. The wife is kidnapped and murdered by a known serial killer and the husband is beaten and left for dead. And then we fast-forward eight years to the present and the man is a doctor who, although still traumatised, is getting on with his life. And then out of blue he gets an e-mail message which seems to be from his wife, and it appears she’s still alive.

Because the e-mail uses specific language which he associates with her?

Yes, exactly. He can’t be one hundred per cent sure because, like everyone else, he’s convinced she’s dead, but he looks into it more deeply and he opens up a real can of worms, finding out first that she is still alive (although in hiding), and then that he’s being set up for her murder. People around him start dying and he finds himself on the run. It’s a hugely pacy book, with short chapters and a whole load of twists and turns. You always think you know what is going to happen but then Coben produces another twist and once again you don’t know where you are. And he manages to carry this on right the way through the book, which is no mean feat.

It all sounds very film-like.

Yes; the French made it into a film which was very well reviewed, but for me it wasn’t as good as the book. What I really love about the book is that you get straight into the action. I don’t want a story where for the first 100 pages the author’s slowly setting the scene. I want to be hooked immediately. 

And Tell No One sounds like it does just that.