By Kurt Anthony Krug
Legal News
For New York Times best-selling novelist James Grippando, becoming an attorney was his goal, while becoming a writer was his dream.
“I knew when I started college, I was going to go to law school,” said Grippando. “In law school, I never thought of anything except being a lawyer who actually practices law. It wasn’t until I got into practice and saw all of these ‘Law & Order’ shows, the hottest show on TV for awhile was ‘L.A. Law,’ and the hottest book in the country was Scott Turow’s ‘Presumed Innocence.’ That was when I decided, arrogantly or naively, I can do that.”
Grippando’s 20th novel “Blood Money” — the 10th featuring crusading defense attorney Jack Swyteck — was recently released. Earlier this month, he was on a panel with Loren D. Estleman, of Whitmore Lake, author of the Amos Walker mysteries, discussing the mystery genre.
His first novel was never published, but Grippando got plenty of “encouraging rejection letters” and an agent. He started anew, but had trouble plotting his second book, which was a legal thriller. One night, after two months of struggling with writer’s block, Grippando decided to go for a walk before going to bed.
“I was ready for bed: jogging shorts, T-shirt. I got about three blocks from my house and a police car pulls up,” he said. “The cop demands to know where I’m going. It’s about 1 a.m. at this point. I told him, ‘I live around. I’m just going for a walk.’ He didn’t seem to believe me and wanted to see some identification. Of course, the lawyer in me was getting his back up… I told him the truth: ‘I’m sorry, I don’t have my wallet.’”
Per Grippando, there were reports of a peeping tom matching his description — right down to his clothes. What saved him from being arrested was the peeping tom had a mustache.
“The cop looks at me closely and asks (dispatch) if it was a phony mustache… He looks at me — and it seems like forever that we’re staring at each other — and finally something he saw in my eyes or felt in his gut that told him I’m not the guy and he said, ‘Go home,’” recalled Grippando. “My hands were shaking as I walked home… I thought, ‘I need to write about this.’ It was writing about the feeling, not about the incident — the feeling of being innocent and accused. I stayed up all night and took that feeling to the most dramatic extremes,
which is a man on death row hours away from execution for a murder he may not have committed.”
This inspired “The Pardon,” Grippando’s first published novel introducing Swyteck. He sold it over a weekend and it’s still in print 19 years later. On February 3, it made The New York Times best-selling list in e-book format.
“Blood Money” was inspired not by the sensationalized Casey Anthony trial per se, but its aftermath. The plot has Swyteck defending Sydney Bennett, a nightclub waitress acquitted of murdering her 2-year-old daughter for cramping her lifestyle. On the night she’s to be released from jail, a bloodthirsty mob wants to dispense vigilante justice. In the crowd is Celeste Laramore, who closely resembles Sydney and is mistaken for her. Consequently, they go after her and she ends up in a coma.
“I saw tens of thousands of people outraged by this trial. What really caught my attention was this woman named Sammay Blackwell, who lives in Oklahoma — (more than) 1,000 miles away from where the trial took place. Unfortunately for her, she bore a pretty strong resemblance to Casey Anthony,” explained Grippando. “Someone spotted her at a gas station, followed her, ran her off the road, Sammay’s pickup truck flipped over 2-1/2 times, and landed upside down. The woman who ran her off the road got out of her car not to help her but to finish her off because she thought it was Casey Anthony.”
He continued: “I thought to myself, ‘When passion about an important trial crosses the line into vigilantism, there’s a story to write about.’ That was the story I wanted to write: This media-driven hysteria that turned into violence. How do you get justice for a person like Sammay? What if she’d been killed? Or seriously injured? That’s how ‘Blood Money’ opens up. Some people say, Oh, it’s Casey Anthony revisited.’ It’s really not, it’s more about the aftermath of the trial and how do we find justice for people who are innocent like Sammay but caught up in the hysteria?”
Along with Estleman, Grippando and fellow novelists Mary Jane Clark, and Katherine Hall Page participated in the “Thrills and Chills” panel in Florida earlier this month to forecast the “next big thing.”
“It was mostly speculation… I’ve been through all this with the Western, and nothing ever comes of it, but the subject is always fascinating,” said Estleman. “It was lively and fun.”
All four are fans of Agatha Christie and are well aware of the “Fifty Shades of Grey” phenomenon. Hall stated that the next trend will be “cozy porn” — a term she coined, which is a combination of Christie and “Shades” that drew plenty of laughs.
“That was her term and I loved it, so I’m borrowing it,” said Grippando, laughing. “It’s one of those things that starts with a laugh and, eventually, someone’ll be laughing all the way to the bank.”
Grippando explained how the publishing industry has changed since he broke in.
“I think it’s the same analysis that everyone in the industry has: It’s a very reactive industry and you look at what’s selling. Now that we’re in the digital era, it’s never too late to be in a reactive posture. You don’t have the same wait times for a book, so everyone’s looking around — What’s selling? How quick can we turn out an e-book and capitalize on this momentum? I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but people don’t have to be as forward-looking as they used to be. In the old days, it took longer to write the book, produce the book, and get it into distribution. Now, you can be in a reactive posture, see this trend, and get the back out in a matter of weeks,” explained Grippando.
He also talked about the legal thriller genre. After he sold “The Pardon,” his editor asked him: “When is this legal thriller bubble gonna burst?”
“Of course, that was unsettling to me because I was on my first novel,” he said. “It isn’t going to burst; it really is an established genre that isn’t going away. It’s no longer a bubble, so there’s room for (fellow lawyers turned best-selling authors) Scott Turow, John Grisham, Brad Meltzer, and James Grippando.”
“Every lawyer in Florida claims to have worked with Jim at one point or another,” said Meltzer, a University of Michigan alumnus. “And every single one of them tells me the same story about how they remember him working on his first book — and how secretly jealous they are of what he’s accomplished.”
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