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" I have certain rules for snooping, under which anything out in the open is fair game. "

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" If you're trying to hide, avoid using your own name. Have a couple spares that you can pull out of your pocket anytime, the more thoroughly documented the better. "

" I learned how to cross-country ski. "

" I usually have a sense of where my characters are personally and ways in which they might transform throughout the novel. But I never know at the outset how the book will end, nor do I ever stick to my original plan. "

" Band I listen to most: The Ramones. "

" People transform in some ways, and they remain exactly the same in others. Often, the thing you'd like to change the most about yourself is where you will forever remain stuck. "

" I'm not a huge fan of research, but sometimes you get an idea, and then you realize you don't know anything. "

" Hair color is the easiest way to change your appearance, but a bad dye job might draw more attention to you. "

" I don't feel like I'm a writer who works under any influence. "

" I could never really choose a favorite book, but whenever I'm asked what my favorite movie is, I always say 'Withnail & I,' a British film from 1987. It's funny and sad and absolutely gorgeous to look at. It's the film I can watch over and over again. "

" I worked for a private investigative agency briefly. I rarely had the opportunity to snoop. "

" 'The Chosen,' if you recall, was based on the Chaim Potok novel and featured Robbie Benson's persuasive performance as a Hasidic Jew. "

" I tend to start books with a very broad outline, but I always leave room for happy accidents. With 'The Passenger,' there were perhaps too many of those. "

" I've always adored the filmmaker Sam Fuller. The first time I watched 'Shock Corridor' was such a magnificent discovery. I love his lack of subtlety, the way he tackles serious topics with bold and inappropriate humor. "

" Although I'm not an orphan and I can't lift a horse. I was, however, briefly famous for my feats of strength: at about age 11, I could competitively arm-wrestle a full-grown man. "

" While I had no intention of ending the series after 'The Spellmans Strike Again,' I did close many doors in that book and, with the fifth one, I was opening a lot of doors and not finding anything behind them and then opening another door and another until I found something. It was a while before I found my stride. "

" If I were one of the three viable presidential candidates, I doubt I'd be too broken up about someone looking into my passport file. Go ahead look, I'd say. It's the passport photo I wouldn't want anyone getting his hands on. "

" I'd like to think that if I were in prison for a crime I didn't commit, someone would be trying to get me the hell out of there. "

" When I was 6, I learned where I came from, which was one step removed from the usual circumstances. I was adopted. "

" I investigate more directly. I tend to ask a lot of questions and don't feel satisfied until I have the answer. "

" I wrote my first screenplay on a lark, because it was a storytelling format that felt like a familiar shorthand - we all watch movies, don't we? But even though I grew up in Los Angeles, my family was entirely unconnected with the movie industry, and I never truly believed that it would one day be my fate. "

" I love 'The Wire'. I can't think of a television show that I think is superior to it in any way. I was obsessed with it from the moment it came on the air. I do also love 'Doctor Who' and 'Get Smart'. "

" I wouldn't say that my family is normal. "

" Humor is the only way to tell a story. Especially the dark ones. "

" You can't be suspicious 24/7. It's too exhausting. "

" For more than three months, I had been president and primary owner of Spellman Investigations, and I can say with complete certainty that I had more power in this office as an underling. My title, it seemed, was purely decorative. I was captain of an unfashionable and sinking ship. "

" The sense of not knowing where I came from let me be as smart as I wanted to be. "

" I was never obsessed with being adopted. I was simply curious about my biological parents. "

" I liked the idea of exposing the beams in collaborative novel. And there are many - especially in the crime world - there are many people working together: James Patterson and his stable of sub authors; and then there are like Ken Bruen and Reed Farrel Coleman and Jason Starr. "

Working Together

" Sometimes a single item can wrap up, in a nutshell, who a person is. In my grandparents' home, a clear plastic container was enthroned on top of the mahogany bar for at least a decade. Painted on the lid in pink, yellow and light blue was 'Have a Nosh With Mort & Ethel'. "

" I was on a few surveillance jobs as part of a big team. I would be the person to follow the subject on foot when the need arose. But most of the time, we were sitting in a car doing nothing. "