Lisa Scottoline is the author of the hugely popular Rosato & Associates thrillers, which feature members of an all-female law firm and which have all become international bestsellers. As a former trial lawyer, Lisa has a profound knowledge of the American legal system, which greatly adds to the authenticity of her stories and the trials (literally) that her characters go through. Her debut novel, 1994’s Everywhere That Mary Went, was nominated for the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Award, America’s most prestigious crime-writing award. Her second novel, 1995’s Final Appeal, won the Edgar. Since then, Lisa’s books have continued to build success upon success – most recently with Fox TV developing a television series based on the Rosato & Associates characters. The last time we interviewed Lisa was in SHOTS #7 (in the days when it was in print), so it was time we caught up with her.

Dirty Blonde, Lisa’s latest novel, came out in paperback in January 2007. Like the novels in the Rosato & Associates series, it draws on Lisa’s firsthand legal experience as a former trial lawyer. The heroine, Cate Fante, is ‘attractive, sexy and tough-minded’. Appointed a federal judge at only thirty-six, she dresses the part but is inwardly terrified. And what no one knows is that she is addicted to reckless one-night stands. When a murder blows the lid off her secret, not only are Cate’s reputation and relationships under threat, but also her life.

Lisa knows how to conduct an interview with style. She’s staying at The Ritz, and she’s indulging her publicity agent and me with one of her favourite English treats – a cream tea. Between mouthfuls of hot scone smothered in jam and cream, and sips of tea poured from a silver pot, I ask Lisa about the Fox TV series.

‘The TV series is exciting! The emphasis, I think – and I hope it’s true – will be on the characterisation. The fact that it’s crime fiction is an important part of it, but it isn’t going to be in the style of 24. It will be more in the style of Grey’s Anatomy, where it’s more character-driven. I think that’s what they liked about the books, and I’m really happy that they saw that.’

When I mention that it’s a crowded genre already, with several well-established series such as Ally McBeal and LA Law, Lisa points out that the law part in her stories, ‘… doesn’t count as much as the people do. It never really has, even though I was a lawyer. I don’t even like the books described as “legal thrillers” – doesn’t that sound so boring? “Illegal” sounds fun, but “legal” sounds boring! It’s not your conventional courtroom drama. I work so hard on these characterisations, no matter what the book. It would be nice to have women on television who are smart and have jobs and fall in love, and care about things. What’s great about the crime fiction is that it’s the same as any novel, except that you get to play along with the puzzle. Every novel has to have good characterisation, and crime novels are no exception to that.’

One of the delights of Lisa’s novels is the range of moral issues her stories pose. They are more than simply whodunnits, and more than simply thrillers. ‘You write the books to be entertaining, and you can play along with the parlour game of whodunnit. But I think that smart people clue into the underlying issues – in Dirty Blonde: “What is the appropriate conduct for a judge?” For me it was a bigger issue – that whole distinction of private and public. When is publicity so intrusive that it becomes a violation of someone’s dignity, if not rights? In the US we have a lot of employers looking to regulate conduct that is not in the office. You have employers saying, “We won’t hire people who smoke – at home.” And I wanted to raise the gender issue. Here’s a woman who’s single, and who’s engaging in this private life that is injudicious. But if a male judge behaved that way, I’m not sure that he would be taken to task as much as she is.

‘I generally write about good girls. And this is a bad girl. I got the idea because I overheard someone say the phrase “dirty blonde” and I thought, “I want to write a novel about a dirty blonde!” Once a month she’ll pick up a man in a bar. And she’s single. If you watch Howard Stern you know there’s conduct in the world that’s a lot more out there than that. But for Scottoline that’s a lot.’

So does Lisa consciously tone down what she writes, because she’s aware of a particular demographic or set of attitudes amongst her readers? ‘No. If I were, I’m not sure I’d have written this. I have a really wonderful editor in the US, and here as well, and they both take the approach, “If you really feel it, you should write it.” Once I wanted to write a book, and there was going to be a child-porn issue. I wrote up a one-page outline and they said, “Okay; if you want to write that, go right ahead.” And then I woke up the next morning and thought, “I don’t want to spend a year inside that head.” So they accepted it, but I rejected it the next day.’

Certainly, Cate Fante is an extremely likeable character, despite behaviour that would be deemed inappropriate for a federal judge. ‘I got a lot of email, and people did like her. I think part of the process of writing it (if this doesn’t sound too pretentious) is you figuring out why she’s doing something. And I didn’t understand it until I started to write the novel, and saw where she was raised.’

‘I’m big on locus as a way of defining character. They tend to be rooted in some sort of place – or not. I know people who’ve been raised in fourteen different places. And they define themselves as like, if you’re X, they’re not X. They’re almost determinedly not from anywhere – and that’s interesting. I think Cate’s a real strong outsider.’

WASPs, Republicans, very traditional? ‘Very Republican. Most importees by George Bush are white men with wealth. So a woman, who’s younger, and who also isn’t from an advantaged background, would stick out. Of course someone like her sticks out already. She’s feeling like an impostor most of the time. And then she gets the job she wants. You always have to be a bit careful what you wish.’

On the subject of going outside one’s comfort zone, Lisa recounts how she feels a similar sense of exposure herself when doing book signings. And even a novelist of Lisa’s stature can suffer from a crassly inattentive audience. ‘There was one signing where someone was talking on her cell phone, almost the whole time! People like that – they’re not going to get it.’ But nevertheless anyone who meets Lisa or explores her website will quickly realise that she is the sort of warm, approachable author who really reaches out to her readers. When I tell Lisa that she genuinely seems to like meeting fans, she agrees enthusiastically. ‘I do. I mean, who wouldn’t? It’s wonderful. I’m also probably ill-suited to be a writer in that I miss people. I live alone – there’re four dogs, but I don’t like to be so isolated. You know, there’s people who read you? I’ve paid a lot of dues. I remember the days when the tour was two blocks from my house.’

And two people showed up? ‘You still have nights like that! I was somewhere in Ohio, and I went into this store. And for me, it’s important to meet the booksellers. Because in a real way they bet on you – they buy those books, so I’m appreciative. So I say hello and meet them. And then it’s about five of eight, and surely crowds will come soon? Eight o’clock there’s one person. And I think, well, that’s the person who came out – I’m going to talk to that person. So after a while more people come in and I think, this is really good. I start to look at the people and I realise that it’s all the clerks I’ve just met. They’ve taken off their little ribbons and their nametags, and they’re pretending to be customers! I was so touched. Now I do a little better when I go to Ohio, but they always remember that night. Because they said, “I just felt so bad for you.” Isn’t that really sweet?’

One example of how Lisa makes extraordinary efforts towards her readers is a contest she ran where a randomly selected book club would receive a visit from her, and have their picture posted on her website. The remarkable part – and a real indicator of Lisa’s emotional generosity – is that she offered, to every non-winning entrant, a consolation prize of an invitation to her house. ‘And it’s about 220 people! My mother’s like, honey? I said, look there’s no men! They’re just a bunch of women, mostly. I think that will be a really nice way to get to know them – and hopefully they’ll get to know me and recommend the books, and demystify a bit the process of writing books. Because I think that an awful lot of people who read that much are interested in the creative process. I know that I am.’

And Lisa’s own creative process? Although her female characters are all strong and independent, there is a certain ‘women in jeopardy’ element in that her lead characters are often being pursued or under threat, or their lives are spiralling out of control: a higher-adrenaline approach than the ‘detective inspects the corpse and interviews everyone’ type of crime novel.

‘That’s the difference between a mystery and a thriller to me. The mystery is that someone goes to an expert, whether it’s Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple or Poirot, Kay Scarpetta or Robert Parker’s Spencer: “Fix this for me, oh great one.” As opposed to the thriller, which tends to be the protagonist in trouble – and my case, where it’s every woman, a non-expert protagonist. An expert protagonist in a thriller would be the Bourne series of Robert Ludlum, or James Bond, where the guy who’s in trouble can shoot and can fight. I don’t do that, because I can’t shoot and fight, and none of these girls can. But I think that’s different from a formula – that’s just what you like to write about. People say, “Do you know how it ends?” I don’t know how it middles! I don’t know what happens next. To me, if I had the patience to write out the big outline, I’d be so bored by the time I came to write. I have the same tension Cate does. What’s going to happen to her? When her life becomes known, what does she do? It does end up being character-driven. I finally taught myself why character equals plot – because what that person would do next is the next event.’

When I suggest to Lisa that it’s more fun to be with the characters, making the same discoveries that they are making, she adds, ‘Plus it allows for serendipity. There’s been times where I didn’t know what would happen next. In the story Legal Tender, Bennie Rosato is in a skyscraper and I thought, “How can I get her out, when the police are surrounding the building?” And I went to a building, came down a freight elevator – and ended up in an underground parking garage and realised, “I’m stuck!” And at that point I become a superb Catholic and look up – and see a hole in the ceiling, and pull my car underneath it and it turns out that there’s cow manure on the ceiling! I see this security guy running over, because I’m standing on my car in the parking lot, and he says, “That is fertilizer, which is used to fertilize trees in the atrium.” That may be fertilizer to you, but it is chapter six to me! I never could have anticipated that.

‘With Mistaken Identity I found out I had a half-sister, in the middle of my life – you couldn’t make that up. I have a half-sister who looks exactly like me, knocked on the door. I said, “Who are you?” And I’m looking at a mirror, and she said, “I’m your half-sister and I really love your books.” My dad had an affair and she was put up for adoption. (She had a great life, before we feel bad for her. She got a normal family.)’

Not like the twin sister in Dead Ringer, then. ‘No; I made her evil. That’s why I dedicated the book to her. I said, “I’ve got to make you evil.” She said, “Sure.” But she had a wonderful adoptive experience, and when her adoptive father died she wanted to find her birth father. And his name is on the birth certificate and I never changed my name. So she knew it from the books.’

‘Scottoline’ is certainly an unusual name. ‘Yes, very unusual. There’s like seven people and we’re all related. So she found me, because I’m fairly accessible through the books. You don’t have to dig very far to find me. And the experience I gave completely wholesale to Bennie who says she didn’t know she was lost until she was found. And that was a little bit how I felt.’

So does Lisa invest a lot of her own personal emotion into the characters? ‘I do. I feel like you have to. I guess everybody does it their own way. I think my stuff’s kind of heartfelt. I know it’s out there – I mean it’s pretty open. Killer Smile was so much about my dad, and then when he passed the book was so full of grief. And it’s just what I was feeling. And I think people feel that.’

And people can feel when it’s faked, I suggest. ‘They can. And sometimes this has more to do with how we feel about all this – even the ugly stuff, like when my half-sister showed up. In truth, I wasn’t so happy about that.’ Indeed, Lisa confesses that her first thoughts were, ‘I thought I was Daddy’s favourite daughter, and now you exist and you’re older than I am?’ And, adds Lisa, ‘She actually looks more like my father than I do. It took me about a year to warm to the fact that she was there, and now we’re really close.’