Do you think of yourself as a novelist or as a crime writer? I am a master of fiction. I am also the greatest crime writer who ever lived. I am to the crime novel in specific what Tolstoy is to the Russian novel and what Beethoven is to music. How do you know since you say you don’t read other books? I just know. There is a line from a wonderful Thomas Lux poem: ‘You’re alone and you know a few things.’ I just know that I am that good.