Ten Questions

1. Which current book will you remember in 10 years’ time? Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. It is brilliant.

2. Where do you write best? At home, in my office.

3. Which book changed your life? There was no single book that changed my life. It was more a process of being changed a little by every book I read.

4. What do you snack on while you write? I don’t snack when I write. I smoke.

5. What is the strangest thing you’ve done when researching a book? For the life of me, I can’t think of anything really strange I’ve done during research. For Cobra, I had wonderful conversations with a retired pickpocket, had to study the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or SWIFT, and the Terrorist Finance Tracking Programme, also known as TFTP, and I rode the Cape Town Metrorail trains extensively.

6. What keeps you awake at night? The big steak I had the night before.

7. What is the best piece of writerly advice you’ve received? Just keep publishing the best novels you can possibly write. A career is built slowly, book by book, reader by reader. It takes a decade, or more.

8. Who is your favourite fictional hero? Ed McBain’s Steve Carella (the 87th Precinct series).

9. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? I got infected with the word “cool” by my son a few years ago. It is such a cool word, and it makes a middle-aged man sound so cool when he uses it. So, the answer to your cool question is “cool”.

10. What are you working on next? A cool new Benny Griessel novel. The cool working title is “Icarus”. • Deon Meyer’s latest novel is ’Cobra’ (Hodder & Stoughton, R280)