by Lawrence Friedman
We are delighted to welcome mystery author and professor of law Lawrence Friedman as our guest.
Lawrence's new murder mystery is The Book Club Murder (Quid Pro Books, September 2012 trade paperback and ebook formats), the latest in the Frank May Chronicles.
Today Lawrence gives us a backstory to the setting for his whodunit: a book club.
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This fall, as I have done for many years, I will be teaching an eager class of undergraduates at Stanford University. The course: "Introduction to American Law". I am a law professor at Stanford; and I am the author or editor of 31 books on law, including a standard text, A History of American Law; and a history of criminal justice, Crime and Punishment in American History.
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Lawrence Friedman
That's my day job. My secret vice — at least the secret vice I'm willing to own up to — is writing mystery novels. I've actually written 14 of them; and Quid Pro Books, a small press in Louisiana, is bringing them out one at a time, under the series title, "The Frank May Chronicles". The most recent one, The Book Club Murder, has just been published.
All 14 are written in the first person; Frank May, the narrator, is a lawyer who practices law in San Mateo, California. No, he is not a criminal lawyer; indeed, his main specialty is writing wills and trusts, and handling the estates of the dead. But murder seems to have a way of pursuing him. Frank is in his 40's, he is affable, and has a rich sense of humor — despite all these murders.
Frank's wife, Celia, belongs to a book club. The club is about to discuss a new (and rather awful) novel, The Chickpea Harvest. But the strangest thing happens; during the meeting, Gerald Unger, the husband of the hostess, Millie, is murdered in the back of the house — while seven women are tearing apart the book. Frank will have the job of handling Gerald's estate; the women come to him, one by one, to spill their theories, about who killed Gerald Unger; why; and how. There are other puzzling facts: who was the mysterious young man who found old Emily Finbar, the next door neighbor, wandering about in an Alzheimer haze, and took her home that night. Was he the killer? And why did somebody steal Millie's jade plant?
Yes, my wife belongs to a book club. Nobody was murdered there, but I had to swear to her that none of the women in my book were based on her friends. Still, her club did start off the thought processes that led to my novel. People and events in life always do that: they make us authors think in ways that in the end take shape as a plot. In Death of a Wannabe, also recently published, I used the story of an acquaintance who had joined a cult; and I also inserted a parody of a certain television program, that many readers will surely recognize. And in An Unnatural Death, my experience as a law teacher came in handy. This first line of this novel is: "I think somebody smothered my aunt." The aunt (of the client), it turns out, wrote not less than four wills, including one that left everything to nonexistent cats.
An author is usually prejudiced in favor of his own books; and I'm not an exception. I've aimed to devise plots that are logical, and with neat but surprising solutions. Above all, I've tried to use a clear, simple style; the novels are heavy on dialog, not description, and more than anything else, I've tried to fill my books with humor. I want them to be funny, rather than grim. I hope you'll give me a chance to prove whether I did or did not succeed.
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Lawrence Friedman, the Marion Rice Kirkwood Professor of Law at Stanford University, is a prolific author on crime and punishment, and his numerous books have been translated into multiple languages. He is the recipient of six honorary law degrees and is a fellow in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 1968, he was a professor of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School and at Saint Louis University School of Law.
You can learn more about the author on his Stanford University directory page.
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The Book Club Murder
Lawrence Friedman
The Frank May Chronicles
Frank May hates trouble, as a lawyer and as a guy. But it likes him just fine. For someone who practices wills and trusts law because it lies far from the scene of murder and mayhem, he has a knack for being caught up in it anyway.
Which is why he thought he was fortune's friend the night his wife stayed home from her book club meeting with a migraine. That very night the husband of the hostess was murdered. Frank hoped he could stay clear of this sordid affair. But that was not to be.
The members of the club all came to believe that Frank and only Frank could solve the mystery. That was never his intention, but here too fate intervened. Despite himself, he became entangled in all the intrigues of the members. And in the end, he blundered his way to the dramatic secret that lay at the heart of the book club murder.
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