From Publishers Weekly Law and OrderSan Francisco personal injury lawyer Stephen M. Murphy has talked with dozens of JDs-turned-authors over the years， and in Their Word Is Law: Bestselling Lawyer-Novelists Talk About Their Craft， he gathers their pearls of wisdom into an anthology of interviews. Novelists， both famous and not reflect on their craft in engaging terms， and Murphy is a fine cross-examiner: the bestselling David Baldacci discusses breaking into fiction and laughingly deems himself a "twelve-year overnight success，" while prolific author and "Living Landmark" Louis Auchincloss rather snobbishly disdains the notion of reading books by "lawyer-hyphen-authors." A foreword by Steve Martini (the author of Jury and other novels also contributes an interview) highly praising Murphy should boost sales.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information， Inc. From Booklist A handful of writers have indelibly marked the booming genre of the legal thriller. San Francisco attorney Murphy， a self-proclaimed superfan of the genre， began interviewing lawyer-authors in 1988 for a local bar association publication. Fascinated by these writers' dual professional roles， he wondered which came first for them， law or writing. He assumed that the law prompted putting pen to paper， but his first interviewee， Scott Turow， whom he considers the father of the current legal-thriller movement， was a writer first. Not every subject's story was the same， of course， and in interviewing 31 writers， Murphy discovered a range of paths to getting published. Louis Auchincloss considers the fact that he is a lawyer to be entirely separate from his writing (and， in fact， he scorns the legal-thriller genre). Some interviews are a few years old， so the subjects aren't talking about their latest hits， but that doesn't make the conversations any less fascinating. Brief biographies， sometimes an excerpt， and bibliographies accompany the talks. Mary Frances WilkensCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved See all Editorial Reviews