I have vivid memories of junior high school. I didn't quite know how to deal with kids and make friends and all of that. If you talked to people who knew me at the time, they'd think I was a popular kid in school. But boy, I didn't feel that.

So long as you tell a story that falls within the fairly generous boundaries of the suspense novel, you're free to make the novel as good as you can. You're allowed to challenge the reader. You can experiment with voice and style.

As a young, ambitious novelist, writing for kids never crossed my mind.

As a kid, books were my great escape and my salvation.

My father and mother emigrated to Canada in 1958, but there's nobody more English than an Englishman who no longer lives in England, and our home was a shrine to all things English.

The only thing I have to go by is what my mother and father told me, how I was brought up.

I bought an island in 1987. It's in one of the lakes in Canada. I went around it in my boat and went to the real estate office and bought it. It's the best $65,000 I've ever spent. My family camp on it and we have great times there.

My family emigrated to the U.S. after the Iranian revolution in 1978.