My senior year at College Park, University of Maryland, I took an elective class in crime fiction taught by Charles C. Mish. He turned me on in a big way to reading and books. I was lucky to have a teacher who changed the course of my life.

George Pelecanos

Crime fiction, especially noir and hardboiled, is the literature of the proletariat.

Adrian McKinty

The Ned Kelly is definitely the coolest of all the crime fiction awards, and if you think about it, it's the only one that's given for an entire continent.

Adrian McKinty

In the crime fiction section, you may just find a novel that talks about the place where you're from and speaks to you about your life - or the life yours could have become if a little misfortune had come your way.

Adrian McKinty

Writing books that people want to read is helpful - my most successful book is my only police procedural, a very popular subgenre of the very popular crime fiction genre.

Allan Guthrie

Anyone who says, 'Books don't change anything,' or - more commonly - that crime fiction is the wrong genre for promoting social change - should take a closer look.

Andrew Vachss

Traditionally in crime fiction, women exist as a bedroom convenience or to screw up in order that the plot may progress. I wanted no part of that.

Ann Maxwell

I usually get up not before 9. I have a huge library - I'm a big fan of Scandinavian crime fiction - so I'll usually take a book and go off to one of my favorite bistros for a cappuccino or espresso or maybe I'll have some lovely smoked salmon for breakfast.

Anthony Geary

Scandinavian crime fiction has become a great success all across the world and rightfully so. Sjowall and Wahloo ushered in a whole generation of Swedish crime writers, many of whom are now available in English.

Camilla Lackberg

The pace of Swedish crime fiction is slower - Stieg Larsson's the exception. And I think we use the environment more.

Camilla Lackberg

Hardboiled crime fiction came of age in 'Black Mask' magazine during the Twenties and Thirties. Writers like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler learnt their craft and developed a distinct literary style and attitude toward the modern world.

Charles Frazier

There's an overlap between social-realist fiction and crime fiction - a sweet spot there.

Daniel Woodrell

I just really like the verve and muscle of good crime fiction, the narrative punch of it. The underlying principle of good crime fiction is an insistence on a kind of root democracy. I've always responded to that notion.

Daniel Woodrell

Crime fiction is the fiction of social history. Societies get the crimes they deserve.

Denise Mina

People are interested in crime fiction when they're quite distanced from crime. People in Darfur are not reading murder mysteries.

Denise Mina

I'd read so much right-wing crime fiction where they find the evidence and shoot the bad guy - I thought there must be another approach.

Denise Mina

I'm not much of a plotter. I start off with an inciting incident, and in classic crime fiction what happens is that all the action flows from that incident. It's very comfy when it all ties up and feels like a complete universe, but my stuff doesn't always work that way.

Denise Mina

I respond very well to rules. If there are certain parameters it's much easier to do something really good. Especially when readers know what those are. They know what to expect and then you have to wrong-foot them. That is the trick of crime fiction. And readers come to crime and graphic novels wanting to be entertained, or disgusted.

Denise Mina

My liking for Scandinavian crime fiction led me into exploring literary writers from the same countries.

Diane Setterfield

So much of contemporary crime fiction is painful to read and obsessed with violence, particularly against women, and I can't read that.

Donna Leon

History buffs expect historical background in historical fiction. Mystery readers expect forensics and police procedure in crime fiction. Westerns - gasp - describe the West. Techno-thriller readers expect to learn something about technology from their fiction.

Edward M. Lerner