00:00I think the perfect crime is one that doesn't look like a crime, so one that you can make look
00:04like an accident.
00:08I think someone who isn't completely evil, but someone quite sort of plausible, grounded, where you can understand why they've
00:16done what they've done to some extent.
00:17I think I like motives that are very personal, so I wouldn't be so interested in something that was to
00:23do with money or anything like that.
00:24I'd probably say Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice.
00:27Also someone from a romance novel, I would say Jamie Fraser from the Outlander books.
00:31I love psychological thrillers because I like to read things and write things that are really grounded that you could
00:35imagine happening to you.
00:36I think, again, it's when something doesn't even look like a murder.
00:39It's going to be like if someone has a food allergy, that's a great one.
00:43And I've used that in a few books.
00:45Is it an accident? Is it murder? Who can tell?
00:47I think a big cliche is that it's always the husband that's done something.
00:50And I still have used that myself many, many times just because it's so true that it usually is the
00:57partner of someone that's done it.
00:59I'm just a bit sick of the kind of sexualisation of dead women that we've seen in crime fiction for
01:05so long.
01:05You know, tired of reading about violence against women in a gratuitous way.
01:09I think, no, I think sometimes it may be justified.
01:12And I like playing with that idea of if you're a kind of detective or in the detective role, should
01:16you let someone get away with it?
01:17If it's a really good reason.
01:19If it's killing someone that's really, really bad, that's hurting other people and protecting someone who needs it, is that
01:25arguably justifiable sometimes?
01:27I get asked a lot how much stuff is drawn from real life.
01:29And I do find that quite strange, given that I'm usually writing about people that have done terrible things.
01:33I have not personally committed any murders, so that's kind of a funny one to be asked.
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