The situation that women were in, at the time, was something that Dumas doesn't really go into, but it's a great subject to look at. It's a great genre because you can do a lot. Sometimes in thrillers, you can really explore things, and it's the same in this genre.

You don't ever see a thriller with a spiritual backbone.

People talk of me as being the inventor of the legal thriller.

Real politics is messy and morally ambiguous and doesn't make for a compelling thriller.

I'd been a thriller reader all my life.

The Strokes can play anything. They could play 'Thriller,' and it would just sound like 'Thriller' as played by the Strokes.

In every thriller written about Washington, particularly after 9/11, there are good guys and there are bad guys, and there's no gray area at all.

The thriller genre in general, it's total foreign ground for me.

I take writing very seriously. There's a lot of responsibility in putting blood in the veins of fictional characters.

I write thrillers for the same reason that people read them – it's escapism.