Crime fiction is the fiction of social history. Societies get the crimes they deserve.
There's a certain type of person drawn to the gangster world, and they're generally young men who were predisposed to violence and risk-taking, who like to make a lot of money quickly and wear flashy clothes.
Little crimes breed big crimes. You smile at little crimes and then big crimes blow your head off.
Where I grew up, in New Jersey, there was a lot of organised crime activity. It was a part of life.
I think among the population at large, people are openly fascinated with crime and don't feel any shame over it. It's only the opinion-makers and the 'opinion elites' who turn up their noses.
I grew up in an environment where it was permittable to use violence to solve a problem. But it was not permittable ever to call the police under any circumstances. That was the kind of doctrine of my household. My dad was a career-long criminal, and you weren't calling the police for any reason.
I was raised inside the gang culture.
When I was growing up, kids used to talk about snitching... It never extended as a cultural norm outside of the gangsters.
A lot of the artists that are coming out right now are sticking to the formula of guns, drugs, money, all that other stuff. I'm not from the 'hood, I've never been arrested, I never shot anybody, I never sold drugs.
This Oscar Pistorius business is interesting. There is this cult of carrying lots of guns and being ready to shoot somebody. There were people I knew had guns and carried them openly around Johannesburg. It is frowned on now to carry a gun, but Pistorius and co. got away with it.
We live in a society where it's cool to be criminal.
Art is rarely intelligible to the criminal classes.
Anyone who grew up in the crack era - you know, I grew up in that era - knew that there were also people out - and there are still guys to this day that are out there, you know, obviously drug dealing - but those were the guys who had access and had money. And some of those guys felt responsible to create opportunity for other people and were also aware of the dangers of their work and often aren't really the ones that are encouraging kids to get into drug dealing.
Now everybody is mafia. You got the Russian mafia, the Mexican mafia. Everybody is mafia these days.
