The Ending Is One Of My Blackest,

I Have Always Had A Particular Antagonism For The Military.

I Was At La Fenice Opera House Back In 1991 With Friends, And We Started Talking About A Conductor Whom None Of Us Liked. Somehow There Was An Escalation, And We Started Talking About How To Kill Him, Where To Kill Him. This Struck Me As A Good Idea For A Book.

Sit Around The Bars, Talked To People, Ate In The Restaurants, And Chatted With The Old Ladies On The Street. Fishermen Are Pretty Much That Way.

So Much Of Contemporary Crime Fiction Is Painful To Read And Obsessed With Violence, Particularly Against Women, And I Can't Read That.

I Was Extraordinarily Lucky. I Wrote A Book Because I Wanted To See If I Could Write A Mystery. Someone Nagged Me Into Sending It To A Contest, Which It Won, After Which I Was Offered A Two-book Contract, Thus Requiring The Writing Of A Second Book.