But one does not make living writing poetry unless you're a professor, and one frankly doesn't get a lot of girls as a poet.
Jeffery Deaver

Certainly going back to Sherlock Holmes we have a tradition of forensic science featured in detective stories.
Jeffery Deaver

For me a thriller is a very carefully structured story.
Jeffery Deaver

Generally my typical books have lots of twists and turns a big surprise ending and then usually another surprise at the end and ideally, as in Garden of Beasts, we get to the very end and we find at the last few pages that there's yet another surprise.
Jeffery Deaver

Hardcover books are fairly expensive these days and to read one requires a significant commitment of time in our busy society. So I want to make sure that when readers buy one of my books they get something they're familiar with.
Jeffery Deaver

I also try very hard to create characters - both heroes and villains - with psychological depth.
Jeffery Deaver

I like the way words go together and I like the gamesmanship of writing poetry. It is such a challenge.
Jeffery Deaver

I liked the challenge of writing in a very concise structure in which both meaning and form are important.
Jeffery Deaver

I spend about eight months researching and outlining my book.
Jeffery Deaver

I spend eight months outlining and researching the novel before I begin to write a single word of the prose.
Jeffery Deaver


I was editor of my high school literary magazine and a reporter for the school newspaper.
Jeffery Deaver

I write pretty much anywhere - on planes, in hotel rooms, anywhere in my house.
Jeffery Deaver

I've always written, all my life, and when I was very young I developed an interest in poetry.
Jeffery Deaver

I've often said that there's no such thing as writer's block; the problem is idea block.
Jeffery Deaver

Ideally, I like to integrate the human issues into the suspense story itself.
Jeffery Deaver

If you have a craftsman's command of the language and basic writing techniques you'll be able to write - as long as you know what you want to say.
Jeffery Deaver

In other words, the people who populate my books are more than caricatures.
Jeffery Deaver

In suspense novels even subplots about relationships have to have conflict.
Jeffery Deaver

It means working harder to do the research but I don't really mind - I don't think I have what it takes to chase criminals through back alleys and wade through blood at crime scenes.
Jeffery Deaver

My books are primarily plot driven but the best plot in the world is useless if you don't populate them with characters that readers can care about.
Jeffery Deaver