The Reversal

"Michael Connelly is the only writer I know who writes like me. I don’t mean that in an arrogant sense – I am talking about the way he researches things, has rich characters and a real sense of pace. He is a former court reporter. You can pick up any of his books and feel you are in the hands of somebody who knows their subject, who knows the police and the law and the world in which he has set his books. He writes with a huge amount of warmth. You feel this absolutely with every character, as well as warmth towards them. He holds me completely riveted. I love everything of his I have ever read. I think he is the greatest living American crime writer. I like him. He’s had a hard time, but he is not this hard-boiled-type character. He has seen it all. He is very experienced and vulnerable as well. I spend on average one day in five with the police because they are the primary characters in my books. I spend time with them mostly in the UK, but I have also spent time with many different police forces around the world – for example, in the States, Russia, Germany, Australia, France, Sweden and in the Caribbean. I have a particular relationship with Sussex police because that is where I live and base my novels. “I spend on average one day in five with the police because they are the primary characters in my books.” Part of the reason I go out with them so often is that there are so many different moving parts to the police and they are constantly changing, so I like to see what is going on, understand their culture – and I really find it fascinating as well. The starting point was meeting the head of brain genetics at the Californian Institute for Technology 12 years ago, and he said to me, “I know you have an interest in science – you might want to come to our lab. We have just identified the cluster of genes responsible for empathy.” And I was amazed. I went there and they started showing me the work they were doing. I couldn’t believe it. They had also identified the cluster of genes responsible for hand-eye coordination and he said parents in the future will be able to choose things like the amount of empathy in their kids and whether they are good at sports. Yes, and early on in my book the scientist says something that the scientist said to me in California 12 years back. The book starts there with my couple visiting a controversial geneticist. You hear how their four-year-old kid had died of a rare disease and they both carry the genes – so there is a very high chance if they have another baby that it could happen again. So essentially they want to pay to choose the genes of their next baby, which they can be sure will be fit and healthy and not at risk from this disease. But, instead, they are made to make many more far-reaching choices about its character and are told that if they don’t, given what the future holds, they are bad parents condemning their child to being born into a genetics underclass – effectively a second-rate person. What is amazing is that this kind of thing is already starting to happen in real life and I realised that if I didn’t write the book real-life events would overtake me. The genie is already out of the bottle and nobody really knows what the consequences will be."