The Popularity of Legal Thrillers by the late Jeremiah Healy

I am so saddened by the death of mystery writer Jeremiah Healy. The Mystery community is stunned and the postings of photos and  outpouring memories is huge. My heart and sympathy go out to Sandra Balzo, his wife, and his family and friends. Such a loss. Jerry was so supportive of other writers and friends. Trying to take his death in, I perused some of his books and then came across this article he wrote in 2000 for the Mystery Readers Journal: Legal Mysteries issue.

Jeremiah Healy:
The Popularity of Legal Thrillers

Why do we – and here I mean both readers and authors – seem to have such a fascination with the sub-genre of crime novels now known as "Legal Thrillers?" While most of my published fiction has involved John Francis Cuddy, a private investigator in Boston, many of the thirteen books and forty short stories in that series have dealt with issues confronting the justice system, such as reporters’ confidential sources (Yesterday’s News), the right to assisted suicide a la Dr. Kevorkian (Right To Die), and revenge killings of male divorce attorneys by disgruntled husband/opponents (The Only Good Lawyer). Also, in July, 1998, a legal thriller of my own entitled The Stalking of Sheilah Quinn focused on the "John-Grisham-meets-Elmore-Leonard" problem of a female criminal defense attorney being targeted by the very murder defendant she gets out on bail. Accordingly, this sub-genre has been on my mind for a while, and I have some thoughts about the reasons for its popularity.

First, I think we baby-boomers have contributed substantially to this phenomenon. All of us remember vividly Raymond Burr on television as Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason. In addition, major legal cases dominated the news at significant points in our lives: the Army-McCarthy hearings in the fifties, the Manson Family trials in the sixties, and the Watergate proceedings in the seventies. All of these, I believe, whetted our appetites for the "renaissance" begun with Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent in 1987 and continued ever since by John Grisham, Jay Brandon, Lia Matera, William Bernhardt, Perri O’Shaughnessy, Paul Levine, Lisa Scottoline, Philip Margolin, Barbara Parker, and Steve Martini.

Also, I think people who aren’t themselves lawyers are fascinated both by how the law works–and perhaps more importantly, by how it doesn’t work–in specific areas of human relations. In effect, the author of a legal thriller is explaining the courtroom to the reader just as the writer of a medical thriller explains the operating room, with any professional jargon first identified, so the reader can vicariously experience the sense of being a litigator or a surgeon without having to plow through a textbook on Criminal Procedure or Human Anatomy.

I’m hoping this wave of popularity will last a bit longer, as my next book–currently being submitted to editors by my agent–is a legal thriller about a young Boston lawyer who grows disenchanted with her large-firm practice and allies herself with an older criminal-defense attorney. Their first case together: the brutal murder of a homeless man, allegedly by an Irish-American "hermit" living in a "cave."

Of course, as a "recovering" lawyer myself, I have to concede one possible, if cynical, reason for the popularity of legal thrillers: Given that there are a million attorneys currently alive in this country, and that many of them are unhappy practicing law, courtroom novels are simply being bought up in huge numbers by frustrated lawyers wanting to learn the "trick" of becoming successful novelists.

Good reading to all, and thanks to Janet Rudolph for offering this opportunity to express my views.

Paul Levine: Solomon vs Lord

Today I welcome back crime fiction author, fellow chocolate lover, and friend, Paul Levine. His “Solomon vs. Lord” series has been nominated for the Edgar, Macavity, International Thriller, and James Thurber awards. The four legal thrillers are now available as e-books on Amazon Kindle. In today's guest post, Paul Levine discusses his main characters, or as he puts it, “How I stole the idea for Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord.”

Paul Levine:

“No matter what you think you think, you think the same as I think.”
            –Spencer Tracy to Katherine Hepburn in “Adam’s Rib

That classic line formed the underpinning of my battle-of-the-sexes novel, “Solomon vs. Lord.” The dialogue expresses a man’s frustration in dealing with the woman he both loves and battles in the courtroom.

One of my favorite movies, “Adam’s Rib” involved an unlikely trial in which the prosecutor (Tracy) and defense lawyer (Hepburn) are married.  The defendant (Judy Holliday) shot and wounded her philandering husband (Tom Ewell), but the legal case was overshadowed by the conflict between the bickering, bantering lawyers.

Similarly, “Solomon vs. Lord” opens with Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord in jail for contempt after one-too-many outbursts in court.  Just as in “Adam’s Rib,” they’re on opposite sides of a case.  Unlike Tracy and Hepburn’s characters, they’re not married.  Heck, they don’t even like each other...at first.

Before long, Victoria is fired from her job as a prosecutor – thanks to Steve – and they both go after a high-publicity client: a young woman accused of killing her older, wealthy husband during a night of kinky sex.  The only way either one can get the case is to team up with the other.  They become reluctant partners, squabbling all the way.

Victoria insists on following the letter of the law.  Steve makes up his own rules, starting with: “When the law doesn’t work...work the law.”  Similarly, Steve says: “A creative lawyer considers a judge’s order a mere suggestion.”  Victoria’s reaction: “You’re the most unethical lawyer I know.”  Steve fires back: “You’re new at this.  Give it time.”

So if you think of the battling lawyers in “Adam’s Rib” or Nick and Nora Charles in “The Thin Man” or Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd in “Moonlighting,” the resemblance is purely intentional.  (The television dramedy “Castle” is another example of the genre).

In “Moonlighting,” Shepherd’s character Maddie says of Willis’s David: “You have the morals of a rabbit, the character of a slug, and the brain of a platypus.”

Maddie goes on to say, “Let me remind you, one case does not a detective make.”  To which David replies, “Let me remind you, I hate it when you talk backwards.”

In “Solomon vs. Lord,” Victoria says: “From what I hear, you spend more time behind bars than your clients.”  To which Steve replies: “A lawyer who’s afraid of jail is like a surgeon who’s afraid of blood.”

In “The Thin Man,” when asked by a reporter if her husband was working on a case, Nora says, “Yes, a case of Scotch.  Pitch in and help him.”

In “Solomon vs. Lord,” Victoria has the heart of a prosecutor – which in Steve’s mind is no heart at all.  “I’ll bet you think Jean Valjean belonged in prison,” he taunts her.

“He stole the bread, didn’t he?” she replies.

“You’d burn witches at the stake.”

“Not until they exhausted all their appeals.”

In short, they exasperate each other, even while making a dynamic team in the courtroom where Steve’s spontaneity and originality are buttressed by Victoria’s organization and discipline

What about after work?  Do the sparks fly there, too?

“Opposites attract,” as Frank Sinatra once sang.  But these two can’t even agree on the meaning of love, much less give in to it.  “Love is a rational, synergistic coupling of two people with mutual interests and similar values,” Victoria says.  This befuddles Steve who demands to know: “Where’s the lust and laughter?”

You’ll have to read the book to find out!

Read more about Paul Levine and his other series at http://www.paul-levine.com