Quotes from Fiona Barton

The emotions, responsibilities - and the pain - of motherhood are unique to each of us with children. Ask any woman, and she will have her own story to tell.

When you are a journalist, you are always looking for the next story. It might come from a phone call from a contact or an unanswered question you spot in someone else's article.

It was this fascination with hidden lives, I suspect, that led me to journalism; seeking to uncover the truth about people became a job.

Barbecue is to North Carolina as the hot dog is to New York.

I know I love a novel with an unreliable narrator, and I think many readers do as well.

The unsaid is a powerful tool. It invites the reader into the narrative, filling in gaps, interpreting silences and half-finished sentences, and seeing the hidden fear in someone's eye.

As a journalist, I've been a professional watcher, picking up the body language and verbal tics that make us individuals and interesting to others.

Over the years, I've interviewed the victims, the guilty, the famous, the important, and the ordinary people affected by tragedy or good fortune. But strangely, it is not always the people in the spotlight that have stayed with me. It is often those on the periphery, the bit players in the drama, that continue to haunt.

I like my villains clever, deep, and driven by pure evil.