Legal thriller writer Lisa ScottoLine is more than ‘the female John Grisham’, says Neil Rose

You might think that with 11 novels under her belt and an ever-growing reputation for legal thrillers, she would get a bit fed up with being dubbed ‘the female John Grisham’. But Lisa Scottoline insists she is not.


‘They’re just trying to say I’m a woman lawyer who writes fast-paced books,’ she shrugs, speaking to the Gazette on a recent trip to London. ‘I think Grisham is a great storyteller and opened up the legal thriller genre in a way it had not been previously. But I don’t think anybody could read a page of Grisham and a page of mine and mistake the two.’



That is true enough. Ms Scottoline is, in many ways, the lawyer’s legal thriller writer. While the lawyers in Grisham’s novels are often on the wrong side of the moral divide, the same cannot be said of those at all-woman Philadelphia law firm Rosato & Associates.


Led by Bennie Rosato, a fearless Amazonian of a litigator, different lawyers at the firm have had top billing in the various books, a clever method of retaining continuity for regular readers while keeping things fresh. The one thing they have in common is that they are all almost too good and virtuous to be true, pursuing justice whatever the cost. Yet it is nice to see lawyers play the hero for once.

It is a conundrum that while lawyers are not popular in the US, novels about them are. So far as her writing is concerned, Ms Scottoline suggests it is because ‘all my books at some level are about “what is justice?” I don’t think it’s about lawyers – it’s a question of right or wrong.’ But fiction can help the image of the profession, she asserts.


That would be of little use if the books did not stand up in their own right. Fortunately, Ms Scottoline’s do. She produces entertaining stories, which, as you would expect of the genre, feature an unrelenting plot and many a twist; but what marks Ms Scottoline out are the strong personalities of her characters (not something John Grisham could always claim) and a welcome helping of humour.


Her latest novel, Killer Smile, is told from the enjoyably self-deprecating perspective of associate Mary DiNunzio, who begins to suspect that the pro bono case she is working on – involving the suicide of a fellow Italian-American in an internment camp during the Second World War – may not be ancient history after all.


Scottoline: strong characters

From Bennie’s love of rowing and the various dogs that appear throughout, to her discovery in an earlier book of a half-sister she never knew she had, Ms Scottoline (pronounced like fettucine) draws heavily from her own life, especially her Italian background, for her books – and never more so than in Killer Smile.

Her paternal grandparents, who had lived in the US for 30 years, were compelled to register as ‘enemy aliens’ during the war. Around 10,000 Italian-Americans were interned around the country, and although this was not to be the fate of her grandparents, they like many others had children fighting for the US at the same time.


She draws parallels between this little-known piece of US history and the current situation at Guantanamo Bay. Both illustrate the strains that can occur during periods of conflict, and the sometimes tense relationship between the law and society, she says. ‘What is justice in war time? That’s the issue behind Killer Smile.’

Despite her personal feelings, she never lets Mary judge what happened in the war and though Ms Scottoline welcomes the recent Supreme Court decision allowing Guantanamo detainees to challenge their incarceration, she recognises that these are difficult times. ‘I’m a libertarian, but when I’m on a plane I want everybody strip-searched,’ she says.


Ms Scottoline has had hard times personally too. She always wanted to be a lawyer – ‘I had a crush on Perry Mason’ – and worked as a commercial litigator at well-known Philadelphia-based firm Dechert, which has a big UK presence.


But she gave up when her marriage ended shortly after the birth of her daughter. Though she loved the law, ‘if I’d been a single mother trial lawyer, I’d never have seen her’, she recalls.

Noting that there were no female legal thriller writers at the time, she gave herself three years or $35,000 in credit – whichever came first – to write and sell her first book. Three years later, book finished but facing mounting debts, she returned to work, clerking part-time for a federal judge, only to have her first novel accepted for publication a week later. She has not looked back since.


Ms Scottoline has blazed a trail as a woman writing legal thrillers, while her lead characters as female lawyers do much the same. She argues that while there is equality at many levels of the US legal profession, ‘a glass ceiling still exists’ and it is only very slowly cracking.


Nonetheless, she says she misses practice. ‘Being a trial lawyer is dramatic,’ she explains. ‘I miss a good fight.’ That is easy to believe, being as lively and enthusiastic in person as she is in her writing.


So Ms Scottoline will continue writing about lawyers – although, in a major departure, she says book number 12 will not feature Rosato & Associates. She would like other lawyers – especially women – to follow her. Lots of lawyers say to her that they always wanted to write a book. ‘I encourage them. We need more voices,’ she says. ‘I learnt to write in law school. Every trial, every brief, is writing a story.’


• Killer Smile is published in hardback by Macmillan; £12.99.