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.

With the murderer. With his crimes. With the weapon. With the location. With The Black Museum. And most of all, with my detective – a single parent, an amateur boxer, a coffee-addicted insomniac who is a good man but who wants to be better.

Max feels very real to me, and I think that’s why the book has been supported by some of the greatest thriller and crime writers in the world. If you will forgive me for a solo on my own trumpet for a second, the great Lee Child said of The Murder Bag:

Spectacular! Tense but human, fast but authentic – maybe this is what Tony Parsons should have been doing all along.

I wanted to create a serial hero, one of those mythic characters like Sherlock Holmes, or Sam Spade, or Philip Marlowe, or Harry Hole. So to get the nod from Lee Child is great, because nobody has created a more brilliant serial hero in recent years than Lee Child has with his Jack Reacher.