'My greatest feat is that stories will stop coming to me.'

‘Crime fiction is the natural medium for writing about social justice. I used to write books about an environmental concern or a healthcare concern, but I was beginning to be tiresome, so now I tend to make those issues part of the backdrop to a crime story instead. Most of the time, so-called mainstream novels that tackle crime do it in a ponderous way, as writers fancy themselves to be Dostoyevsky...

My greatest feat is that stories will stop coming to me. I write stories that I want to tell - then find a way to add the thriller and crime elements to them. When I don't have a story, it feels very manufactured.'

Sara Paretsky, author of 16 novels including Critical Mass in the Independent on Sunday