Narayan Radhakrishnan's Interview with
Terry White
Author of
Justice Denoted

Narayan:
Professor of English at Kent University, Ashtabula, Terry White has edited & compiled a comprehensive bibliography of legal thrillers from America, Britain & Europe. As a legal thriller aficionado, I had the wonderful opportunity to conduct this interview. We chatted about the legal thriller & its popularity, & also about the future of this genre.

My first question is what prompted you to take this (arduous) task of compiling legal thriller novels?

Terry:
Years ago I co-authored -- I should properly say co-compiled -- a similar bibliography of espionage fiction. At that time, I was teaching at a small private college in West Virginia, happened to be teaching a sophomore-level class in spy fiction, & I made the discovery that the librarian, Myron (“Jack”) Smith, Jr. was a voracious & widely published bibliographer. He mentioned he was too busy to undertake a third edition of Cloak And Dagger at his publisher's urging, & asked me if I would be interested. I enjoyed that task so much that years later, when I was well-steeped in legal thrillers, so that was the background, but the idea to do one came naturally. I had been reading Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent at the time & was very impressed with his writing. In fact, I had asked him to contribute to “Craft Notes”, but he responded to say that his writing & law practice in Chicago were keeping him busy.

I had read Jon Breen's legal thriller bibliography Novel Verdicts, a brilliant book but by then very dated, & could find no other examples except in archived discussion lists. The one thing that firmly drove me to make a commitment to it was a chain letter my friend, a lawyer, in Little Rock, Arkansas, had sent me for a lark. I was delighted to learn that lawyers indulged in whimsical humor & were dutifully passing the letter around to one another all over the country. I remember seeing Gerry Spence's letter in the samples my chum sent me & remembered his very human expression that we all need “luck and love” in this world. It charmed me & changed some of my stereotypes about lawyers, so things were combining to get me interested in it.

Narayan:
How did you amass this information? Was it a solo effort? Did you face any stumbling blocks along the way?

Terry:
I started a massive filing system that wound up consuming all of two file cabinets & 8 Xerox boxes. I began reading systematically & scoured everything & anything, commercial or academic, that could put me in the way of legal thrillers. Fortunately for me, I have access to an academic library system that can put any book in my hands in three or four days. I just have to find the title & I can get it. To have that kind of access is priceless in research.

One summer I ordered two thousand books via interlibrary loan; our university system not only hooks me in to the 12-story library on Kent Campus but the network of university libraries all over the state. I managed to misplace just one volume in all that coming & going. I began reading eclectically without a preformed idea of what a “legal thriller” actually was. Everyone seemed to understand it but no one seemed to want, or feel a need to, define it as a distinct class of mystery. At one point, I stopped collecting & wrote to Jon Breen to see if he would be interested in a collaboration. I did not think his bibliography could be improved upon, just updated with the many hundreds of books that had been published since.

When I discovered he was coming out with a new edition of Novel Verdicts I was in despair. I thought I was filling a gap. It was one of several disappointments that disheartened me. Mr. Breen is so good a critic that, for example, his annotations of Erle Stanley Gardner are impossible to surpass. I loved his shrewdly critical assessments of his writers & I wanted to emulate his ability to capture the work concisely & give the reader an insight into the quality. I had felt an obligation to be “objective” in the spy book but not here. I wanted to praise & damn where I thought justified. But if his book had come out when I began this six years of steady compiling, I would have ceased at once. He's the master. I haven't looked at his work for this reason & won't.

Narayan:
What were the criteria you fixed in identifying a work as a legal thriller? In other words, what were the necessary ingredients, needed for a work to qualify as a legal thriller to be included in Justice Denoted?

Terry:
I took on the point of view of the reader who likes legal thrillers & doesn't care about fussy distinctions. Of course there have to be common denominators. I don't know how Breen classified his, but I'm sure I was much looser in my criteria. If there were no lawyer, point of law, or courtroom scene involved, that novel would have had a hard time getting listed; however, it would not take a great deal of any one of those ingredients to gain admission. As far as genre, I drew no lines. Novels, of course, predominate as they should, but I threw in a self-published Internet novel, film scripts, & even a few sci-fi short stories that I happened across, & liked for one reason or another. The quality of the writing spans the entire range from trash through one-hit-wonders to classic works of our times, such as Camus & Kafka.

Narayan:
From Erle Stanley Gardner to D.W. Buffa, we have seen that legal thrillers are getting more & more popular day-by-day. What do you think accounts for the current popularity of the legal thriller genre?

Terry:
Ordinary people are living complicated lives, for one thing. The law is everywhere you turn. It can manifest, like the government itself, a blandly stupid face or it can be a monster that seizes you & grinds you up in its maw. Lawyers are far more realistic representatives of our times than the rehashed Chandler private eyes. More women are entering the field & the fray, as both writers & courtroom protagonists.

I don't think we're more obsessed with the law necessarily, but it seems to be enjoying the explosion even today. I perhaps gave too much credit to a few writers like Turow & John Grisham for assisting this popularity. No question in my mind, it's here to stay & getting better.

My bibliography opened up a wound in me because of the two-year delay in publication, & I could not add a single book to the list because the manuscript had been formatted. Even now, when I go to the library to check the new arrivals, my heart sinks when I see the latest legal thrillers. I see how impossible it is to stay up with it. I deluded myself to think I could. You have to be a bit banal to be a bibliographer.

Narayan:
Any plans to join the legal thriller bandwagon? Can we expect a Terry White legal thriller in the near future?

Terry:
I'm going to devote this year to writing something; it'll be creative but I'm looking around for a project now. Maybe a film script or a novel. I'm not sure of the genre. I've had no luck with a couple manuscripts, featuring my hardboiled existentialist detective. I feel time is running out on me & I'm done with so-called academic books. I enjoyed doing them but I want to enjoy writing, & I haven't done that in years.

Narayan:
Can you please tell us more about your other books & drama?

Terry:
Nothing to tell, Narayan, because everything I did sank like a stone. There is nothing like the pleasure of your own writing, however bad it might be.

Narayan:
Was there any difference -- I mean in the methodology used -- for collecting information for Cloak And Dagger & Justice Denoted?

Terry:
There were differences, yes, but I'm not sure which ones mattered. I was an insane reader for many years & had long acquired the art of knocking off a book in a few fast reads & penning a two-, three-sentence annotation about it. I don't want to cheapen my subjects but there are writers who are so bad & predictable that you know how the book turns out after page 25. Some authors made me loathe them for their lack of skills & inability to create memorable characters.

I did my doctoral dissertation on point of view & I have a great respect for authors who can structure a story with art & unity. An appalling number of writers haven't even rudimentary skills but they get published & they seem to be saying the write things. Of course, readers must share the blame; they don't demand enough craft from writers. I don't care whether a writer is popular or “great”; you expect to see the narrative game played well.

Narayan:
Now, a few questions about the “Craft Notes” -- your interviews with lawyer novelists & practicing lawyers. Did you feel a common thread run through the opinions, in the perception of the legal thriller -- by both authors & practicing attorneys, or were the opinions myriad & different?

Terry:
The one common thread, among the many differences in likes & dislikes, is that they all understand the differences between law & justice, whereas the average citizen really doesn't. Trial lawyers go crazy over the public's misperception of “reasonable doubt”, & their stereotyped portrayals as tough-guy (-gal) crime fighters. Interestingly, lawyers were not hard on authors who did not have law degrees. I expected to see some elitist commentary there, but found none. Some had great respect for authors for various traits, such as the ability to make the tedious reality of the courtroom process interesting to the lay reader.

Narayan:
Can we expect new updated editions to Justice Denoted in the future?

Terry:
Be my guest. I'll send you my Xerox boxes at once. I thought of updating the spy thriller once but realized I can't get back that mindset that enabled me to digest so many ill-written novels just to get to the few good ones.

Narayan:
My final question, I believe that you must have gone through many a legal thriller while compiling this book -- your top ten favorite legal thriller reads?

Terry:
It would be easier for me to recall the ten best meals I have than the ten best thrillers I've read. My mind doesn't let me think that way for some reason. Here are a few I really savored:
•  Turow's Presumed Innocent (this book had me bug-eyed with admiration for days.)
•  Pete Dexter's Paris Trout (again, a brief courtroom scene or a lawyer protagonist is all it takes to make it -- no one else, I think, would rightly call this a legal thriller.)
•  Anatomy Of A Murder (quaint though the dialogue is, it's still a classic of this “genre”.)
•  Any Lisa Scottoline novel. (I regret she's one I had to stop including once the ms. left my hands because she's been a steady producer of first-rate fiction for many years now.)
•  I love Frances Fyfield for similar reasons; she exposes a dark, honest intelligence in every one of her lead characters.
•  The O'Shaughnessy sisters also come to mind for producing high-caliber work. They are always meticulous. Plots tend to get recycled no matter the author -- it's style that makes it all work.
I'd better stop. I have so many that gave me great reading pleasure that I can't name them all. You see? Even now, I can't identify what exactly a legal thriller is formally speaking.

Narayan:
Thanks, Mr. White for an illuminating interview. I am sure many an ardent devotee of legal fiction will be checking out Justice Denoted. I myself am off to hook a copy of Paris Trout

Do check out Narayan's review of Justice Denoted - I hope it makes you go out & buy yourself a copy!

Narayan Radhakrishnan
2004©Narayan Radhakrishnan
Published 04/11/04