Ruth Rendell

I have an idea, and I have a perpetrator, and I write the book along those lines, and when I get to the last chapter, I change the perpetrator so that if I can deceive myself, I can deceive the reader.

While most of the things you've worried about have never happened, it's a different story with the things you haven't worried about. They are the ones that happen.

I always know when a novel is going to be a Barbara Vine one. In fact I believe that if I weren't to write it as Barbara Vine, I wouldn't be able to write it at all.