Read the previous Book of the Month: A Certain Justice post here!
Last time, I alluded to the introduction of Wes Farrell as a major character in the entire San Francisco series. Remember how with A Certain Justice I decided to write a book that didn’t have Dismas Hardy in it because I believed that my publishing history had determined that he was not a commercially viable character? Well, I truly believed this with all my heart. By the time of the previous book, The 13th Juror, Dismas Hardy was married, with children and a family. His work was courtroom work. I wanted to get away from all of that in this book, to put things more on the street level. And who better than this new guy who used to be a lawyer and wasn’t going to cut his hair until something – anything — made sense?
So Wes was a street guy, cynical and jaded, but with a yen for justice. I loved him from the moment he showed up on the page. But of course, I had to give him a back-story to explain his disaffection with the law and why he didn’t want to work in it anymore. And this led to one of the truly unusual decisions in my publishing life.
In the course of writing Wes’ back-story, I stumbled upon what was going to be the plot for my next book, which turned out to be Guilt. What made this so unusual was that Guilt then became both a prequel and a sequel to the events in A Certain Justice. When A Certain Justice ends, Glitsky’s first wife Flo is dead. Which makes for a slight “excuse me?” moment when Guilt begins and she is back alive.
And there are other, similar, temporal issues within the books – to the extent that I have suggested that readers of these two books should start with Guilt, read the first four sections, then read all of A Certain Justice, and finally go back to Guilt and read section five. I’ve had readers do that and say that they enjoyed it immensely. To everyone else, all I can do is assure you that neither of the books needs the other to be enjoyable – they way they both came into being is just one of those interesting stories that I thought everybody would like to hear.
A Certain Justice – Purchase on Amazon
Read an excerpt from A Certain Justice
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Just finished reading Betrayal, which I enjoyed, and decided to go to your website. Must say as a native San Franciscan, I’m a sucker for SF authors, although I now live in northern Northern California, as they often talk about places I’ve been.
With regard to “Betrayal,” I noticed immediately that Evan could not have brought anything into the US as he was totally out of it. I wondered why Washburn did not pick up on that. Then again the other action might not have happened.
Forgot the name of the previous books of yours I have read.
Jeanette