The show does go to great pains to show how both the nominal good guys, like McNulty, and the bad guys, like D'Angelo Barksdale, are deeply conflicted. And the differences between these characters can often seem incidental.

Because they were both trying to work themselves outside of the system. And as Simon says, it's the institutions, whether it's the drug business or whether it's the administration within the police force, that will destroy you if you try and operate outside the box.

McNulty is a perpetual screw-up. And that makes him a notable contrast to Derek Strange, the main character in your last three books, who is a former cop, but an unambiguously good guy. Does that make McNulty more of a challenge for you?

McNulty actually has a closer affinity to one of my earlier characters, a guy named Nick Stefanos, because his life outside of his work is getting increasingly troubled. The only thing that makes sense to him is when he's working a case. Strange, on the other hand, is trying to make a life for himself outside of the work.

I can't speak for Simon, but I know we both share a certain affinity for the film "The Searchers," and Ethan Edwards has always been the archetype for these characters I write. If you remember the last scene in "The Searchers," the camera is in the house, and Ethan Edwards/John Wayne is walking back into the wilderness, and the door swings shut on him from inside the house; the wind was blowing it back and forth. And that's McNulty and Strange and Stefanos, and all these guys. In other words, these guys have either been charged or self-charged with protecting the community in some way. But they can never live in it. They can't live in it as productive family men without these deep dark waters swimming around in their head.

How do you decide to kill off a character like D'Angelo, which happened last week? Season one was really as much about him as McNulty. How do you decide to get rid of a character like that, who is so much a part of the show's soul?

It was tough. Also because the actor was very good and we liked the actor a lot. But last season, when he rose up against his own [drug-dealing family] ... you know, death can be redemption, too. People in these TV shows or movies, redemption is always something else. You get in these character meetings and people are always saying, "We have to give these characters redemption." But that was his redemption, he got out.

One of the things that made the first season so bracing was the fact that both McNulty and D'Angelo finished in disgrace, McNulty demoted to a police boat and D'Angelo sent off to jail. There was no happy ending. But fans surely tuned in to this season to see if they find redemption. How do you struggle with that? Because if you deliberately don't give them any redemption, it could seem just as formulaic.

We're going to do whatever feels real. To HBO's credit, we get notes from them about the scripts, and we've never gotten a note from them saying, "McNulty's the star of the show, can't we have him stand tall for once, can't we have him win?" We never get notes like that because they're not beholden to advertisers, or networks that are owned by conglomerates. It's always about making the show better.

And I'm not kissing their ass either. I'm not privy to everything -- everything filters up and down through Simon -- but I know that in our script meetings Simon has never said, "HBO wants us to do this." And it's been pretty liberating.

Simon talks about how this is a writer-driven show. You told me that when you write your novels, you don't chart them out. You don't know where the story is going until you sit down to write. But how does that work when you're putting together a series?

We beat out the first eight episodes before we started shooting. Of course that changed a lot as we went along, but we had a blueprint for eight episodes. And then, somewhere in the middle of the season, we sat down and started beating out the last four, which was really intense work. It was days spent behind closed doors in an office, and a lot of oftenheated discussion.

And in the process you've been watching dailies, watching how the characters emerge on screen.

Yeah, you know writers will want to write up characters and actors that they enjoy writing for. And the opposite is true. So you're going to see some people recede and other people bubble up out of the mix. Which is very much like writing a book too; you don't always intend for a minor character to become a major character.

So there were characters who were downsized, once the shooting began?

I would say so, yes. That's accurate.

And you're not going to tell me who those are, so who were the characters that benefited the most? Who grew as the season went on?

Well, Frank [Sobotka] was always going to be a pretty major character, but this guy Chris Bauer just blew everybody away. He's an amazing actor, he's like a young Gene Hackman.

And Amy Ryan, who plays Agent Russell. We knew, from watching dailies, that people were going to really relate to her character, and her journey, from going from a lowly port cop to being real police. She started to come up front and center too.

Will this spoil you, though, to have so much involvement when your novels start to be made into movies? Curtis Hanson ["L.A. Confidential"] is developing "Right as Rain" -- will it be difficult not to be so deeply involved?

They've been pretty good about keeping me involved. And Hanson is a world-class director. You can't ask for anything more.

But casting Derek Strange must cause you some concern. You've put a lot of effort into creating him.

Yeah. And I don't see him being an extremely good-looking guy. I always say that when he's walking down the street women's heads might not be turning, but once they get to know him, they come around.

So who would you cast?

I think there are a lot of great character actors, like Keith David, people of that nature who I just really respect as actors. You know, and we've resisted this in "The Wire," I just don't like seeing actors who I really know. You know, where I say, "Look, there's Tom Cruise in a wheelchair," or "Look, there's so-and-so playing a retarded person." I just like to get lost in it. I'd prefer to see not really big stars, but just good actors.

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