Is it bad to like old-fashioned whodunnits? If so, then lead me away in 'cuffs. My bookcase contains over 75 Agatha Christie novels, collected since I first became enthralled with her in my early teens. I love the thrill of the chase - pitting my wits against hers, searching for that tiny clue buried up to its neck in all those red herrings. I'm also a big fan of Agatha Christie's contemporaries from the Golden Age of fiction - Ngaio March, Dorothy L. Sayers, Josephine Tey and Margery Allingham. Occasionally I come across one of theirs I haven't yet read, and I maintain there's few greater pleasures...

My home town of Guildford happens to be the birthplace of another of my great literary heros - P.G. Wodehouse, comic genius and a stalwart exponent of what I like to think of as the "feelgood" novel.

From the contemporary era, I love the books of Reginald Hill, particularly his profoundly funny Joe Sixsmith detective stories, about an unemployed black lathe turner turned sleuth who lives in Luton with a cat called Whitey. How can anyone resist that?

I'm also a big admirer of Lindsay Davis, for her laconic Roman private informer, Falco, and the delightful Simon Brett for his good, old-fashioned 'Fethering' mysteries, set on the West Sussex coast. And I've recently discovered, and immediately fallen in love with, Jasper Fforde (or rather, his works, especially those involving DCI Jack Spratt from the Nursery Crime Division of Reading CID).

So you see, there's a pattern emerging here. I like crime and humour, preferably in combination. I'm not too good with gritty reality - I get enough of that on News at Ten. In fact, for a crime writer I'm uncommonly squeamish. Alway have been...

I blame Enid Blyton. I spent my childhood in the company of her amateur sleuths, the Five Find-Outers (and dog). This was my first introduction to the structure of the classic whodunnit - a mysterious crime, a closed circle of suspects and a list of motives and opportunities. Add a dash of (admittedly non-PC) humour and a touch of the absurd and the seed was sown.