Paul Levine

BIO

Paul Levine is a former trial and appellate attorney, and the award-winning author of the critically acclaimed series featuring Miami trial lawyer Jake Lassiter and other legal thrillers. He has also written for ABC Television, Stephen J. Cannell Studios, and the CBS television program, JAG. Levine makes his home in Los Angeles, where he is at work on the fourth Solomon vs. Lord mystery, which Bantam will publish in 2007.

INTERVIEW

September 30, 2005

Bookreporter.com's Suspense/Thriller Author Spotlight Team (Carol Fitzgerald, Joe Hartlaub and Wiley Saichek) interviewed Paul Levine about SOLOMON VS. LORD, the first in a series of novels featuring Florida lawyers Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord. Levine discusses his inspiration for this new series, as well as the extreme disparities that fuel the fiery relationship between the novel's two protagonists. He also explains how being a television scriptwriter and a novelist differ and reveals just how much reality is reflected in his fiction.

Bookreporter.com: What inspired you to write a book about a pair of lawyers who are simultaneously attracted to and put off by each other

Paul Levine: Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord are very strong characters with VERY different personalities. She does everything by the book. He burns the book. She follows the rules. He makes up his own. She's proper and dignified. He's reckless and a bit of a rascal. But...there's a tremendous physical attraction between them. And the key is synergy. They bring to each other positive qualities the other lacks. They're better together than apart, professionally and personally. That's why they have to work together...and may have to get together, but it will be hard to stay together. Sort of like real life.

BRC: SOLOMON VS. LORD has a fine balance between drama and humor. Is it really that funny in the courtroom?

PL: There's more humor in court than you'd think. And when something a tiny bit funny does happen, it seems even funnier because of the solemnity of the surroundings. 

BRC: Some of your judges are funny. The part-time football referee...the judge who rules based on Perry Mason novels.... They can't be real.

PL: Judges are funny. In Miami, where I practiced, there used to be a judge who kept a box of cigars on his desk. In contested paternity lawsuits, when he ruled, he would sometimes hand a cigar to the defendant and say: "Congratulations. You're a father."

BRC: Do you start creating characters or scenes with actual events or people in mind? Are, for example, the details of Charles Barksdale's death based on a real case?

PL: I attended a medical examiner's seminar a few years ago and listened to a lecture about sexual asphyxia. That's where someone purposely cuts off his own oxygen to attain a stronger orgasm. And sometimes, the person strangles to death. I thought it might be interesting if a spouse was charged with murder after a night of kinky semi-strangulation sex gone bad.

BRC: We loved the dialogue in SOLOMON VS. LORD. In interviews you've said that some of the dialogue was inspired by conversations with your wife. Do the two of you really banter? Or do those conversations just act as a framework into which you weave the quips and comebacks as they suit your characters?

PL: My wife Renee is a very good trial lawyer with a very smart mouth. I'm older than she is, so she was a baby lawyer when we met...in court. I was representing a coffee importer who was sued for delivering inferior coffee beans and Renee was hired as additional counsel on my side of the case. I probably wasn't very nice to her because I was this hotshot and she was a newbie. But I was attracted to her and maybe showing off a bit, sort of like the high school blockhead who's tossing a football and thumping his chest, hoping the cute cheerleader is watching. Anyway, the case gets crazy. My client, the supposed coffee importer, turns out to be an international arms dealer. Opposing counsel gets indicted and convicted for fraudulently overbilling his client and goes to prison. After a start like that, how can my fiction seem over the top?

BRC: We also loved "Solomon's Laws," which were scattered throughout the novel. Where did Solomon's Laws come from? Will we see more of them in THE DEEP BLUE ALIBI, the next book in the SOLOMON VS. LORD series?

PL: Rule #1: "If the law doesn't work...work the law." Yes, Steve Solomon makes up his own laws. They come from my own healthy cynicism about what Steve terms the "so-called justice system." And yes, there will be more twisted laws in ALIBI, which will be available in February.

BRC: You have said that you like to begin writing your novels after developing an outline. Do your characters ever surprise you as you are writing and cause you to revise the outlines?

PL: Not as often as I surprise the characters by killing them off.

BRC: Anagrams play a significant part in SOLOMON VS. LORD. Did you make these up yourself, or did you have some assistance?

PL: Bless the computer. A number of software programs let you instantly compute anagrams. 

BRC: This book is the first of a series. When you decided to create Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord, did you anticipate a series from the beginning, or did the idea for making Steve and Victoria continuing characters come after you began writing?  What have you planned for the SOLOMON VS. LORD series in the future?

PL: Personal relationships evolve, so I thought from the beginning there would be room to grow with Steve and Victoria. Suffice it to say there will be challenges to them working together or being together.

BRC: You wrote almost a season's worth of scripts for the television program "JAG." Could you compare and contrast the creative process between writing for a television series with that of writing a series of novels, such as SOLOMON VS. LORD?

PL: When you come onto the staff of an ongoing TV show, the characters already exist. Their world exists. There are back stories and plans for the future. You are very limited in what you can do. When you begin your own novel, you have a blank slate. Anything goes. The other major difference is that a novel is all yours. A show like "JAG" takes more than 200 people to get on the air, if you include all the studio and network types as well as crew, actors, writers, assistants, etc.

BRC: The characters in SOLOMON VS. LORD and the opportunities that could surround them seem to be ideal not only for an ongoing series of novels but also for television.  Has there been any interest from the TV industry? If you were in charge of such a project, who would be cast as Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord?

PL: We're in discussions at this very moment with a television network, and there may be news about that soon. Casting? Can you get me William Powell and Myrna Loy? Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn? Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd? How about the modern-day equivalents?

BRC: What authors do you read for pleasure? And what authors, regardless of genre, do you find have influenced your own writing?

PL: As a kid, I read Steinbeck and Michener. As a young adult, John D. MacDonald and Raymond Chandler. Anything not to read law books! In the 1980s, Scott Turow's PRESUMED INNOCENT and Carl Hiaasen's TOURIST SEASON both came together to make me want to write a novel. 

BRC: You spent 17 years as a lawyer and you also worked as a newspaper reporter before you became a novelist and screenwriter. Has writing always been a major part of your life? When did you decide to make the transition from the legal profession to writing/screenwriting?

PL: I did a lot of appellate work as a lawyer and I tried to entertain the court in my briefs. I'd always try to tell a story, maybe slip in a joke and hopefully not forget to cite a case or two that might help my client. When Bantam Books bought the first Jake Lassiter book, I began to dream about quitting the day job and becoming a full-time storyteller.

BRC: What advice do you have for aspiring novelists and/or screenwriters?

PL: Dare to dream. But don't quit your day job...yet.

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