Alastair Reynolds Quotes

I've been in an Agatha Christie called 'The Sittaford Mystery,' which I enjoyed, but 'The Pale Horse' has a real sense of intrigue and the jigsaw pieces fitting together.

I thought I might write mysteries for the rest of my life.

For many years, I read mystery novels for relaxation. But my tastes were too narrow - and, having read all of Agatha Christie and John Dickson Carr, I discovered that the implausibility and the thinness of the people distracted me unduly from the plot.

One of the things that I love about crime novels is that you can turn the volume all the way up. If I can make somebody blow their subway stop, I win.

If you ask people if they enjoy crime novels, they'll say, 'Oh, my guilty pleasure is...' then name a really brilliant crime writer.

I spent the first twenty years of my writing career preparing for the mystery genre, which is my favorite literary form.

The thing about being a mystery writer, what marks a mystery writer out from a chick lit author or historical fiction writer, is that you always find a mystery in every situation.

Most detective story readers are an educated audience and know there are only a certain number of plots. The interest lies in what the writer does with them.

I would love to write a mystery - a romantic, funny mystery.

I love mysteries, and I read them every night before I go to bed.

Crime fiction is a way of satisfying that nosy need to know.

I read all the Agatha Christies when I was younger and like Sherlock Holmes. Crime fiction has always fascinated me, but I'll read anything anyone gives me.

My crime novels are highly structured. I never start out with a dead body. I start with an impossible scenario. Opening questions should be mysterious, weird, intriguing, and contain the seeds of the solution. The structure has to be meticulous - I'm a structure freak.

For me the Anita series is built like a mystery series, which means that as much as possible each book stands alone, so you have a mystery to solve from the beginning to the end of the book.

The funny thing is, though I write mysteries, it is the one genre in adult fiction I never read. I read Nancy Drew, of course, when I was a kid, but I think the real appeal is as a writer because I'm drawn to puzzly, complicated plots.

That's what a good crime novelist - any good novelist - should do with you: play with your perceptions while showing you everything in plain sight.

There are two ways to approach the writing of a mystery novel: adhere to the rules, or break them with glee.

I had a publishing history of murder mysteries.

Crime is the biggest genre in libraries and in bookshops, and it is hugely varied.

Mysteries and thrillers are not the same things, though they are literary siblings. Roughly put, I would say the distinction is that mysteries emphasize motive and psychology whereas thrillers rely more heavily on action and plot.

In a crime novel, if you are going to have a big revelation in chapter 30, you have to plant the information in chapters three and 11.

That's what everyone said attracted them to Lantana - I call it an adult mystery, because it's not a thriller in the sense of that other way, but it is a mystery.

With a thriller, you're going to have your red herrings, as different suspects are thrown up as possible culprits. You can only explore that for so long - if you do that more than a few times, it starts to get a little redundant.

Mysteries I read for fun, so I will probably never write one, for fear of spoiling the fun.

Part of the brilliance of Stieg Larsson's books is that they are so complex, so many different facets coming together.