A prank threatens a trio of women on a girls’ trip in the 15th novel by the law professor and former prosecutor. In an email interview, she singled out the “smart lawyers” she’s been reading and the writer she doesn’t dare give advice. SCOTT HELLER
What books are on your night stand?
My current read is an advanced copy of Janelle Brown’s “What Kind of Paradise.” Janelle is one of my NYT puzzle pals, along with Angie Kim; we text daily about our game progress — and also writing. It’s her best book yet. The next few waiting are Attica Locke’s “Guide Me Home,” Maggie O’Farrell’s “This Must Be the Place,” Alex Segura’s “Alter Ego” and Chris Whitaker’s “All the Colors of the Dark.”
How do you organize your books?
Anything I want to read soon gets piled onto the night stand. Unread fiction goes to one section of the bookshelves, nonfiction to another. My cherished personalized, signed copies go together — James Lee Burke up top, and Lee Child, Harlan Coben, Michael Connelly, Sue Grafton, Laura Lippman and Karin Slaughter appear frequently. My tolerant husband’s section is presumably well organized, but having no idea is the beauty of keeping bathrooms and bookshelves separate.
What books might we be surprised to find on your shelves?
I’m a law professor and former prosecutor and am deeply interested in the justice system and public policy. My current audiobook is “An Inconvenient Cop,” by Edwin Raymond, a retired N.Y.P.D. lieutenant who left the department in part because of quota-based policing practices. In recent years, I’ve maintained a steady diet of books from smart lawyers sounding the alarm about attacks on the rule of law, people like Preet Bharara, Geoffrey Berman, Barbara McQuade, Andrew Weissmann and Melissa Murray.
What books are you embarrassed not to have read yet?
I don’t believe in letting books, whether the ones I read or the ones I skip, make me feel embarrassed. But I do still feel guilty for not reading Plato’s “Republic” in Humanities 110. I did the unthinkable to a grade-grubbing rule follower like myself and resorted to the CliffsNotes.
Which books got you hooked on crime fiction?
As a very young reader, I adored Encyclopedia Brown and “From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.” After I begged my personal literary curator (a.k.a. my librarian mother) for more stories that felt like puzzle-solving, she got me started on Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, which eventually led to Agatha Christie and Mary Higgins Clark. My real obsession began in the late ’80s in college, when I would browse the $1 paperbacks at Powell’s in Portland, Ore. I discovered a slew of smart, gritty female sleuths who began to feel like friends — Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone, Sara Paretsky’s V.I. Warshawski, Karen Kijewski’s Kat Colorado, Marcia Muller’s Sharon McCone. I never dreamed I’d have a row of my own books on those same shelves.
Are there times when being a trained lawyer gets in the way of telling a good story?
In a great legal thriller like “Presumed Innocent,” the technical details are not the star. Instead, Scott Turow’s expertise infuses his characters and the creation of the world itself. In hindsight, I probably used my lawyer brain too much in my debut, because I was insecure trying my hand at a novel. These days, if I find myself writing about the law itself, I ask myself what it adds to character, plot or setting — and then I usually delete it. Wanda Morris is only three books in, and she’s already been compared to Turow and John Grisham for good reason.
The trio of friends at the center of your novel call themselves “The Canceled Crew.” Why was it important that social-media blowback figure in the story?
I’m fascinated by the way we collectively decide that strangers on the internet are either completely perfect or the worst humans ever, based on a few seconds of social media. At a time when the most rewarding books are ones in which the good guys aren’t all good, and bad guys aren’t entirely bad, it’s bizarre that we don’t have more nuance when it comes to characterizing real people whose real lives are affected by the weird sort of fan-fiction that gets crowdsourced online.
Have you ever gotten in trouble for reading a book?
“Flowers in the Attic,” by V.C. Andrews. I was the only kid whose parents would let me read whatever I wanted, so my dog-eared paperback copy got passed around the grade school playground in Wichita like contraband.
What’s the secret to a great twist in a mystery plot?
It should feel completely unexpected yet totally inevitable.
Have you taken any writing tips from your father, James Lee Burke?
Just keep writing. He was out of print for more than a decade when I was a kid, and I had no idea, because I saw him at the typewriter every single day. To me, that made him a writer.
Offered any?
I would never.
The post Encyclopedia Brown Got Alafair Burke Started on Crime Fiction appeared first on New York Times.
