Author’s Introduction: A Clean Kill was a first for me. The success of Missing Pieces had my fans in Germany asking for another John Maiden book–something I’d never planned for. So instead of writing a new book based on some unexpected, inspired idea, for the first time I had to go away and deliberately plot and create a story. Among all the concepts I considered there was one thing I was determined to do. I reckon that modern police methods and forensic science are killing off the whodunit crime novel. Sure, there are forensic science novels and TV shows like CSI, but if you want to write a traditional crime story it’s hard to ignore the role of forensics and surveillance techniques that should play in catching the killer. I think that I came up with the answer with The Sanctuary. It’s a place filled with creepy, nasty, unhappy and untrustworthy people who live so close together it’s impossible to separate scientific evidence. Oh, and there’s a killer inside with them, too.