i was fortunate to spend some time with ed mcbain, evan hunter, his real name, who was a master of this7th precinct novels, anyone who knows them in new york. he was one of two writers who got me into crime writing. really? yeah. his style was just fabulous, there was a chandler—esque quality. he used to spend hours, days, weeks with new york cops, looking at how they sat, what they ate, quite apart from the technical stuff, absolutely immersing himself in it and writing his beautifully chiselled novels. how did you get into it, his work? i've been weaned, obviously, on the english traditional crime novel, agatha christie, dorothy l sayers. but with all of those books there was a kind of tradition, you start with a dead body in chapter one and the rest of the book is kind of a puzzle to solve it. first of all, graham greene's brighton rock was the first time i'd read a crime thriller where the victim is still alive at the end of chapter one. and the menace created in the first paragraph of that. the first line is great, "within three hours of arriving in brighton, hale knew that they me