Rough Trade

know?
    A: Yes and no. Kate began life as a construct, a device. I knew that I wanted to write a series character and the premise of the series was that every book would take the reader inside a different business. I also knew I wanted to write a woman, but I didn’t know enough about police work to write a credible cop and I felt uncomfortable with a female P.I., which has been done successfully by so many others. Given my background, a lawyer seemed a natural. Of course, back when I was making these decisions, Scott Turow had yet to write Presumed Innocent and John Grisham was just another plaintiff’s attorney in Oxford, Mississippi. The choice of Kate’s background—great wealth and old money— came directly from my experiences attending an exclusive girls’ prep school. While I didn’t share Kate’s pedigree, I had classmates who did, and I was interested in writing about the narrowness of that world and the contradictory mix of unlimited opportunity and suffocating expectations that characterize it.
    I used to reply incredulously to all inquiries about whether Kate and I were alike. After all, I sit alone in my office in a torn sweatshirt writing novels and taking care of a household that includes three school-age children and a husband with a very demanding career, while Kate, dressed in an Armani suit, deals with her glamorous clients and their high-stakes corporate problems. In her spare time she carries on with brilliant and impossibly handsome Stephen Azorini. Yeah, right. We have a lot in common. Of course, the truth is that we do. We share the same cranky outlook and have a similar disregard for what other people think of us. Neither of us has much use for authority, which is why I write books (my characters do what I want them to do or I kill them) and Kate is perennially in trouble with the senior partners at her firm.
     
    Q: Why did you decide to write a series character?
    A: I always wanted to write a series because those are the books that I’ve always loved best. I grew up reading about Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, and later Lord Peter Wimsey and George Smiley. As a reader it is wonderful to be able to spend time with a character you enjoy book after book. As a writer I enjoy having the luxury of having the character grow and change over the course of many stories as opposed to just one.
     
    Q:What are the challenges of writing a series character?
     
    A: For me the hardest thing about writing a series is introducing Kate and the continuing characters in every book. It’s not just that I know that the readers of the previous books are already familiar with them while others are meeting them for the first time, but rather that it is difficult to present the same information (Kate’s background, profession, widowhood, etc.) in a fresh way each time.
    There are also weird problems, like the fact that it always works out to be winter in the books. In part it is chronological, because the books follow one after another and the first book in the series, Principal Defense, begins in the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas, which put me on a certain schedule. After Fatal Reaction, I was determined to write a summer book, but because Rough Trade, the next book in the series, was about the business of major league sports, specifically a football team, it had to be fall. So here I sit in monotonously sunny Phoenix (not a conducive climate for a mystery writer—I crave downright gothic amounts of clouds and rain) with the air-conditioning set at arctic levels, writing about the snowy Chicago skyline.
     
    Q: How do you keep track of Kate’s characteristics and behavior (so you don’t contradict yourself in later books) ? Do you reread the previous books before writing a new one? Do you keep a written record? Or do you have an incredible memory?
    A: After five books, a lot of Kate’s characteristics and behavior are second nature to me. After all, when you think about it, I spend a lot more time with her than with my husband. I do reread the previous book before beginning the next one, but that’s more a function of trying to get Kate’s voice back in my head and wanting to avoid repeating myself. From time to time I also flip back through the well-worn copies of the previous books that I keep on a corner of my desk to check details. Still, I make mistakes, especially with names of very minor characters. For example, the name of the wife of the managing partner in Kate’s law firm