If we (readers) were sitting in a quiet hotel lobby, having a conversation with Det. Li Yan and Pathologist Margaret Campbell, what kind of persons would we find them to be? What's engaging about them that grabs the readers of your obviously successful stories? What's the chemistry between them, and also between you and them?

Li Yan is a young man with a powerful sense of what is right and wrong. He is impetuous, and sometimes naive in his pursuit of corruption cases that bring him into conflict with the authorities. He is doggedly intelligent, and works away at a problem like a dog with a bone. Extremely empathetic, and with a strongly compassionate streak, his character and outlook on life has been shaped by a horrific up-bringing during the Cultural Revolution.

Margaret is short-tempered, with a fast mouth that frequently gets her into trouble in China. She has a wicked and sardonic sense of humour, but is a consummate professional. She is, however, an unhappy woman, with a troubled past, and finds it very hard to adapt to Chinese culture and the Beijing way of life.

Li and Margaret are really unlikely lovers--but we can't always choose who we fall in love with. They are metaphors for their countries of origin, symbolising the cultural divide between China and the US--strange bedfellows, often in conflict, but unable to do without each other.

David Pitt of Booklist--in regard to The Firemaker (Murder in China) in particular, and the series in general--has characterized your work as both romantic and melodrama, and says your characters have great popular appeal. How do you juggle the character arc along with the suspense arc?

If I wasn't writing crime, I would probably write romance novels. I wrote television serial drama for many years, and so all my writing is very much character and relationship based. For me there are two elements to writing mystery novels or thrillers--there is the plot, which should be original, engaging, surprising; and there should be characters whom we care about as they move through the landscape of the plot. And when it comes to series, it is the relationships which hook the reader. When I get emails from readers about my China books, they never ask what the plot of the next book will be. They always want to know what is going to happen to Li and Margaret.

The other novels in this series are The Firemaker, The Fourth Sacrifice, The Killing Room, Snakehead, and Chinese Whispers. What are the continuities among the novels of the series, which were popular in the U.K. even before you became globally acclaimed?

Li and Margaret are the mainstays of the books. They are the principal characters, and theirs is the central relationship. But there is a third character. And that is China itself. China is addictive, surprising, fascinating, and sometimes shocking, and is one of the reasons readers keep returning.

What grabs you deeply about these stories and their subject matter? You must have quite a passion, since you went to live in China for a time. Are you fluent in Chinese?

I am fascinated by the scientific and medical possibilities that writing in the crime genre presents me. China adds another dimension to that. So I have written about such diverse subjects as genetic food modification; the illegal trade in human organs; the role of advanced science in improving sports performance (illegally and illegally); a new, foolproof lie-detection system that reads the brain; and the creation of novel viruses for the purposes of bio-terrorism. But the Chinese dimension introduces such thorny topics as the Cultural Revolution and its effect on Chinese society; the tragedy of the one-child policy and its awful side-effects; and the pursuit of corruption in high places. Sadly, I am not fluent in Chinese, and during my researches in China always worked with an interpreter.

Are your novels available in China? Do Chinese readers take a special interest in your stories? Are the Chinese interested in or curious about the West? How do you see relations between China and the rest of the world?

The Firemaker was translated into Chinese and published in installments in a Crime magazine in Beijing. The Chinese police themselves are fascinated by my books, and many of them are avid readers AND writers of crime fiction. The Ministry of Public Security (the police ministry) actually publishes several monthly magazines of short crime stories written by serving police officers. I was invited to write a column in Contemporary World Police, the national Chinese police magazine about my books and my researches into the Chinese police, and was later made an honorary member of the Beijing chapter of the Chinese Crime Writers Association. I believe China is moving closer to the rest of the world all the time, and I made my own contribution to that in obtaining an invitation for the Chinese Crimes Writers' Association to join the Association of International Crime Writers--after decades of being left out in the cold. One interesting encounter I had amongst the Chinese, was with a crime writer who was born on the same day, in the same year as myself. It seemed extraordinary to me that two people who were born in the same moment on different sides of the world should end up pursuing a career as crime writers which would eventually bring them together. After our meeting, he carried a photograph of the two of us on the back cover of his next book.

French readers have taken a strong fancy to your work. Anything special about that, as opposed to the rest of Europe and U.K.?

The French are fascinated by China. But they also regard crime novels as literature, unlike the UK and US. The French love flawed characters and dark stories. They have a highly regarded genre known as "roman noir"--black novels. One of my books, which was turned down by all the major crime editors in the UK, was snapped up in France where it has been published to great acclaim and snapped up by other publishers all over Europe. I now, also, have a UK publisher for it--whose editor was at pains to point out to me that he was a "literary" editor and not a crime editor. It's a great shame that so many crime editors make that distinction. Great crime novels can also be great literature.

What are your plans for the future? What about your other series?

I am currently writing the fifth book in my Enzo Files series. The fourth in that series, Freeze Frame, is published in the States next month. Last month I published a standalone thriller called Virtually Dead, which is set in the virtual world, Second Life. And I have just signed a three-book contract for a trilogy of books featuring a Scottish detective returning to the island of his birth in the remote Outer Hebrides.

You are obviously hard-working, talented, and prolific. Do you write one book a year, as many writers try to do, or do you have some other schedule driving you?

My normal schedule is one book a year, however, the desire to write some stand-alones, outside of my series, has prompted me to write two a year for the last two years, and I am currently looking at a writing schedule of five books over the next three.

The advice one hears from famous authors is to shoot for series rather than stand-alones. Any thoughts on that?

That's a kind of cynical and commercially driven view. Sadly, it is probably good advice in the current climate. I have written two stand-alones in the last few years and each time have been pressured by my publishers to turn them into series. So far I have agreed to one trilogy, and the jury is still out on the other. But I feel that series, while I enjoy the challenge of writing them, can be limiting--in that the series you are known for is all that publishers and readers want from you. I often wonder what happened to the good old days when readers would follow their favourite authors regardless of what story (or genre) he or she chose next. These days we're stuck in ghettos of our own making.

Any advice for new authors?

Train as a plumber!

One more question, Peter. Your new detective is engaged in the remote area of his birth, the Outer Hebrides. Is this in any way a homecoming for you? How do you feel about living abroad, and your home in Scotland?

Although the Outer Hebrides is a part of Scotland, is it culturally and linguistically very different. The population is only 21,000, and most people speak Gaelic. But I have a very emotional attachment to the island since I created and produced a television drama series in the Gaelic language which got into the Top Ten in Scotland.  It was filmed entirely on location, and I spent about 5 months a year on the island for six years, during which time I got to know almost every blade of grass and every grain of sand.  It is a bleak, windswept, and brutal landscape, which very much reflects the story I set there. 

However, France is now my home. I have a great sentiment for the country of my birth, but France is where I live, write, pay my taxes, and will probably be buried. Life, like writing, is always about moving on.  And one should only look back with affection, not regret.

John T. Cullen writes fiction and nonfiction. He is the author of A WALK IN ANCIENT ROME, Revised Second Edition (Sep 2009; nonfiction/ancient history); LETHAL JOURNEY (Sep 2009, dark thriller based on a true 1892 crime/ghost story); UMNITSA (WW2 espionage thriller); THE GENERALS OF OCTOBER (suspense: what if we had a Second Constitutional Convention?); and nearly two dozen other books. Visit http://www.johntcullen.com/.