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You need a crime, a detective, and the solution.
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When I first started writing the books in the 1980s, all of the female detectives were flawed in some way because they were based on noir characters.
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I didn't want to write a grown-up account of Gallipoli. I wanted to find out what would happen if I looked at Gallipoli through the eyes of an innocent.
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I have been reading crime books ever since I was a child, but I had never tried to write one.
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Most detective story readers are an educated audience and know there are only a certain number of plots. The interest lies in what the writer does with them.
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I fell in love with words in all languages, and I read everything I could find, particularly myths and legends and histories and archeology and any novels.
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I don't think the process of writing books is in any way sensible. It's not logical, and it's not reasonable. I do write very fast, and I just do it in a binge. Other people binge-drink; I binge-write.
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I remember talking to John Mortimer, and he said he was relying on Rumpole to keep him in his old age; well, I'm doing the same with Phryne - she's my mainstay.