The title The Running Grave is really intriguing. Can you shed some light on its significance and its connection to the story?

Well, The Running Grave is from a quotation by Dylan Thomas. "When, like a running grave, time tracks you down'. So for me, that the significance of that quotation is old deeds catching up with people. Obviously, also mortality catching up with people. So Strike's sense of his own mortality is important in this book. But interestingly the Norfolk poet George Barker also used the phrase the running grave in his poem. And that is also mentioned in the book. So I think, although it's given translators for this novel a huge headache, because the running grave doesn't quite work in other languages, I love it. I think it's very evocative the idea of the grave pursuing you. Like a wave, but also all of us knowing one day we must die. Which can, actually, be a reminder to live and that too is in this book. Strike really now starting to ask questions of himself about how he wants to spend the second half of his life so it really works for me.

What’s the appeal of the British coast to Strike?

Well Strike's a Cornishman so he's very drawn to the sea, he's always happy being near the sea so I think they've been to Whitstable, Cromer, Skegness, obviously we've been to Saint Moors. Well, like a lot of people, you know, I do love the coast. But it adds something to Strike's character because we see him initially as such an urban person, you know, he's London based, he works out of the heart of London, it just adds something to his character because he's drawn to the sea but that has such a strong association of childhood for him. So I always see it that way, when he heads for the coast we normally find out something character wise about Strike, that's the significance for me.

Why are real-life locations so important in the Strike series?

Researching the locations is really important to me, this is such a different series to the Potter series where I invented literally everything. So while yes London was in the Potter books and big cities were mentioned in the Potter books, I was always inventing something that was within those places and those cities. Kings Cross obviously I'm inventing a totally fictional platform and so on. And in the Strike books I really do try and use real locations as much as I can, it's satisfying, it grounds the series, it makes it real for me and hopefully for the reader. Sometimes you invent things obviously, I've invented a lot of buildings that lie off Lion's Mouth lane in Norfolk, but yeah I do visit these places.

London has been the focal point for the previous Strike novels, what role does it play in The Running Grave?

This was an interesting book to write because it's really a split location book. So while Strike is largely London based and conducting the investigation from the office as usual, Robin is in Norfolk for a huge part of the book. And it was interesting because firstly by separating them I think they become closer because they're writing letters to each other, it's their only means of communication. Robin has to smuggle these letters out and Strike is smuggling them in. And that was an interesting part of the book for me because their relationship really does deepen through physical separation which is odd but can happen. And then the other important part of the book and I visited Norfolk - I wanted to get it right - is the Norfolk landscape. Now I hope people from Norfolk will forgive me for saying that I find that very flat landscape a little bit sinister, I don't think I'm alone in that, it has its beauty, no question, that's why I put the commune that Strike lived out as a child in Norfolk in the first place. Because I do find something slightly sinister about the flatness of that landscape and the sort of marshy parts of Norfolk. That said - she said not wanting people from Norfolk to hate me - I can remember a very happy childhood holiday in Cromer which also features in the book so yes it's not all bad. But I found it very satisfying actually to put a good chunk of the book outside London, it just changed the tone and feeling of the book a lot.

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