Jeffery Deaver

For me a thriller is a very carefully structured story.

Ideally, I like to integrate the human issues into the suspense story itself.

In suspense novels even subplots about relationships have to have conflict.

It means working harder to do the research but I don't really mind - I don't think I have what it takes to chase criminals through back alleys and wade through blood at crime scenes.

Of course, all writers draw upon their personal experiences in describing day-to-day life and human relationships, but I tend to keep my own experiences largely separate from my stories.

I spend about eight months researching and outlining my book.

Of course, I write crime stories, and I have to describe violence and the aftermath of violence.

Rule one: Write about settings you're familiar with.

The easy answer is that writing novels is a lot more fun than practicing law.

So I work hard to present the human side of my characters while not neglecting the plot.

I spend eight months outlining and researching the novel before I begin to write a single word of the prose.

I liked the challenge of writing in a very concise structure in which both meaning and form are important.

When you work alone, you need to socialize at some level.

Readers are paramount. I live to write books for them.

Hardcover books are fairly expensive these days and to read one requires a significant commitment of time in our busy society. So I want to make sure that when readers buy one of my books they get something they're familiar with.

Generally my typical books have lots of twists and turns a big surprise ending and then usually another surprise at the end and ideally, as in Garden of Beasts, we get to the very end and we find at the last few pages that there's yet another surprise.

You think publishing is tough but the music world is ten times tougher.

My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don't populate them with characters that readers can care about.

To answer that I have to describe what I think is my responsibility as a thriller writer: To give my readers the most exciting roller coaster ride of a suspense story I can possibly think of.

Certainly going back to Sherlock Holmes we have a tradition of forensic science featured in detective stories.

The outline is 95 percent of the book. Then I sit down and write, and that's the easy part.

I also try very hard to create characters - both heroes and villains - with psychological depth.

In other words, the people who populate my books are more than caricatures.

I was editor of my high school literary magazine and a reporter for the school newspaper.

I write pretty much anywhere - on planes, in hotel rooms, anywhere in my house.