I am trying to give the best performance possible in 400 pages. I want readers to be scared; I want them to be moved. Entertainment doesn't necessarily mean something trivial, but it does mean people wanting to get to the end of a book.

Having worked as both comedian and crime writer, the one thing I know is that both involve the delivery of a performance.

When I began to write, I was surprised at how little London had been used in crime fiction. Places such as Edinburgh or Oxford or L.A. seemed to have stronger identities.

I admire writers such as Elmore Leonard who can nail a character in three or four lines of dialogue, so he doesn't need pages of back story or clumsy exposition.

Stand-up comedy is a lot about amplifying emotions and situations; movie acting has a lot to do with mellowing things down and making them subtle. The transition was almost terrifying because of the magnitude of change.

I think one in five Americans has a disability of some sort. That's 20% of the population, and yet we rarely ever see people with disabilities on-screen, and their stories and their resilience and their zest for life and their humor and their humanity.

Brits have a better sense of humor in most ways. It's darker, more cutting.

I do comedy at a lot of colleges, and at the end of those shows, I take time to be a little more real with audiences. I try to inspire them to follow their dreams. When I was that age, it was incredible to hear stuff like that.