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From crime editor to crime writer

23 April 2018

‘I think one of the reasons I was attracted to Highsmith is that most crime fiction is morally educative: morals will be upheld, justice will be doled out, wrongdoers will be caught and punished. But that did not happen with Tom Ripley and it fascinated me to see this character get away with stuff. It fascinated me more to find myself rooting for him. I still think this is a pretty nifty trick...

For a long time, probably since 1988 when The Silence of the Lambs was published, the crime market was dominated by books about serial killers. I like a good serial-killer thriller, but, probably happily, I do not have one in me. Then Gone Girl changed the game. Psychological suspense is what I had studied and what I thought I would be able to write...

The publishing process is reactive. Whereas writing is almost wholly creative. I needed to keep the two apart...

Writing a book, for me, was a lot like assembling a puzzle. That satisfying click when the last pieces fall into place.'

Daniel Mallory, who under the pseudonym A J Finn, published his much-heralded debut crime novel The Woman in the Window after a career in crime publishing.