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" I am trying to write novels for properly clever people, but I also want them to be proper novels that also stick in a person's mind and have an atmosphere about them. "

Sophie Hannah

I Am

Want

Trying

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" I love the house we're in, but at the same time, I'm hooked on the romance of house-hunting. "

" My crime novels are highly structured. I never start out with a dead body. I start with an impossible scenario. Opening questions should be mysterious, weird, intriguing, and contain the seeds of the solution. The structure has to be meticulous - I'm a structure freak. "

" Agatha Christie never wrote books that just started with a dead body, and a 'Let's find out who the murderer is', which is kind of mysterious but not that mysterious. She always started with, 'How can this thing be happening; isn't it strange?' "

" For me, a big part of writing psychological thrillers is choosing crimes committed for motives which would only apply to a particular person in a particular situation; a unique, one-off motive that is born out of someone's particular range of psychological afflictions. "

Sophie Hannah

Unique

Born

" Reading is the only area of my life in which I prefer to be non-autonomous. "

" My characters all have issues, but I don't see that as weird or abnormal because I think in real life there are very few bland, normal people. "

" I'm not cut out to lug babies around! "

" Only Agatha Christie can write like Agatha Christie. "

Sophie Hannah

Only

Write

" Poirot is a classic character from fiction, not a MacBook Air; he would not benefit from updates. "

Sophie Hannah

Fiction

Air

" When I set out to write crime fiction, I didn't think to myself, 'I'm going to model myself on Agatha Christie' or 'I am going to be a crime writer in the Christie tradition'. "

" The crimes in my books are committed by people who can't keep it together any more. They do something to express their own pain, and that has a terrible effect on somebody else. "

" Some writers, I'm told, look for their characters' surnames in telephone directories. I don't - it seems too obvious. Or too deliberate: if you go looking for names, you're bound to find them, of course, but I've always had a superstitious hunch that the names you find by accident are always going to be better and more satisfying somehow. "

" Crime fiction is a way of satisfying that nosy need to know. "

" When my children were very young, I was slated to go on a business trip. When it was nearly canceled, I decided I wouldn't tell anyone and go off for a week's vacation anyway. In the end, the trip went off as planned. But I was intrigued by the idea of an illicit holiday. "

" No highbrow literary type would ever say 'Moby Dick' is good but it's just about a whale, or a Jane Austen would be important if she wasn't just writing about romantic relationships. "

" I know a lot of crime writers feel very underrated, like they're not taken seriously, and they want to be just thought of as writers rather than ghettoised as crime writers, but I love being thought of firmly as a crime writer. "

" I want my books to explore motives which make people think, 'Wow! Imagine the psychological state you'd have to be in for that to be your motive!' Whereas things like blackmail, jealousy - they're rational reasons for committing murder. "

Sophie Hannah

Want

You

" I am a fellow commoner at Lucy Cavendish College. My husband used to be a lecturer at Leeds University, and we lived in Yorkshire for 11 years. When he gave up his job, we realised we could live wherever we liked. "

" Nobody has ever written as many enjoyable, fun-to-read crime novels as Agatha Christie. It's all about the storytelling and the pleasure of the reader. She doesn't want to be deep or highbrow. "

" In a crime novel, if you are going to have a big revelation in chapter 30, you have to plant the information in chapters three and 11. "

" I always notice the dysfunctional dynamic of human relationships because most places where you encounter it, people are trying to pretend it isn't happening. "

" I was working as a secretary in Manchester and thought I would always do that. Then I got this letter offering me a two-year fellowship where I could write; they would pay me a salary and give me a flat to live in. It was heaven. "

" When a writer tries to copy another writer, it's doomed to fail. "

" A lot of women feel like they should be enjoying motherhood, they should be fulfilled and shouldn't be thinking, 'I wish I didn't have to do this.' "

" In West Yorkshire, I'd have to drive three quarters of an hour to go shopping. "

Sophie Hannah

Drive

West

" No one has been buried at Mill Road Cemetery in Cambridge, England, for many years, and so the place has a shady, overgrown magic about it. "

" I never write about CIA conspiracies or the FBI or mafia or anything like that because I just don't understand that world. But I think I do understand individual human harmfulness. "

" I'm snobby about books that aren't crime fiction: if I start reading a literary novel and there's no mystery emerging in the first few pages, I'm like, 'Gah, this obviously isn't a proper book. Why would I want to carry on reading it?' "

" Most crime fiction plots are not ambitious enough for me. I want something really labyrinthine with clues and puzzles that will reward careful attention. "

" What surprised me most while writing 'The Monogram Murders' was that everything I needed seemed to arrive in my head exactly when I needed it. "

Sophie Hannah

Head

Most