The Weapon

‘But why take out the family?’ Wren said. ‘Nils Gatling wanted to shut his sister up. Why kill the husband and the children? Why abduct the little boy?’ ‘Making it look like a spree kill was part of the blind,’ I said. ‘And so was the cattle gun. What kind of nutter uses a cattle gun for mass murder? Somebody who’s done it before.’ I thought of what John Caine had told me in the Black Museum. ‘You kill with what you know. And it was a good blind – the Slaughter Man looked perfect for this – especially after Mary Wood gave him a glass of lemonade and a smile and he started collecting her pictures

Tony answers a question about London’s character

London is like a character in the book, what are three places in London? Question submitted by Catherine Mount.

Tony answers a reader’s question about breaking into a new genre

Given your tremendous success as a novelist, were you nervous about breaking out into a different genre? Question submitted by Chloe Healy.

Tony on Tony

A bit about me. I always knew that I would write. I knew that nothing would stop me. I always loved stories, I always found that books engaged me like nothing else, and helped me to make sense of the world.

Interview at Hay Festival

Sarfraz Manzoor interviews Tony at Hay Festival.

Tony on Max

I have loved crime fiction my whole life and I know that the very best of it honours the form while adding something fresh, an unexpected twist. That's what I tried to do with The Murder Bag every step of the way.

Tony on London

My first job in journalism was at New Musical Express (that's a shot of me with Bruce Springsteen above, when we were young and stepping out into the New York night wearing only our vests) but my first piece of journalism that didn't involve hanging out with rock stars, was soon after I left the NME, when I was embedded with the Vice Squad at 27 Savile Row, West End Central.