The Murder Wheel

"I did a couple of events last year with Tom, as our books are a nice fit. And I’m always fascinated by writers who write in a completely different way to me. I guess I’m what they’d call a ‘pants-er’—I have my characters but I don’t necessarily know what’s going to happen. Obviously you’ve got to kill someone if you’re going to have a murderer—but I don’t always know who the murderer is until I get to the end. So I kind of find out along with the reader. But when I was on these panels with Tom, he talked about his process, which is very spread-sheet based. With a locked-room mystery, the plot has to be so tight—you need to know how it’s been done before you can write about it. “It’s interesting to compare the fiction of the time to fiction written now—with the benefit of hindsight” He has two locked room mysteries; this one starts with a detective going to interview a woman accused of murder—but then you have a murder in a theatre as well, which happens in real time, so to speak. So you’re trying to figure out what’s going on, and how these two things are connected. I’m just in awe of people that can site down and plan these things. And I know that people who love locked-room mysteries just love Tom’s books."