Philadelphia lawyer turned suspense novelist speaks about life's mysteries

Lisa Scottline would not look at the body. But she did see the pictures and the body bag. Strange as it may seem, studying forensics was not the most difficult of the hands-on research techniques Scottline employs to make her suspense novels seem realistic. For her first novel, the University alumna spent time at convent, learning the silent ways of the sisters. "I talk a lot, I'm Italian," she said. "And I'm a lawyer -- we argue all day. You're going to tell a lawyer to shut-up? It's a joke." After graduating from the Law School, Scottline married and joined a large corporate firm in Philadelphia. But nine years ago, when she and her husband divorced and her daughter Kiki was born, she traded the high-pressure lifestyle of opening statements and cross-examinations for the mellow writer's life. "I gave myself five years," she said. "And at that point, all my money would run out and all my credit cards would be maxed-out and [Kiki] would be in kindergarten. And that's what happened -- and at that point, I sold my book." The manuscript to Scottline's first mystery, Everywhere That Mary Went, sold within a week, and she was soon on her way to the top of commercial fiction. The novel was nominated for an 1994 Edgar award for "best paperback" and Scottline followed suit with her second mystery, Final Appeal, which was recently nominated for another Edgar award. Scottline said it was surprisingly easy to write her first book. "This sounds really glib," she said. "But really you just do it." And you have to find a market that needs you, Scottline added. "I read all these legal thrillers by men and figured I should try," she said. "I read a lot of people's novels and said I know I can do at least as well as this." So, Scottline sat down and wrote about what she knew. All of her novels take place in Philadelphia, where she has lived all her life. And the main characters are all University graduates. "I've taken aspects of my life and milked 'em," she said. "The theory is that if you tell a specific story people will extrapolate to the universal -- if that doesn't sound too pretentious." Coming from Scottline's mouth "pretentious" almost seems to be an impossibility -- she's a lawyer, a writer and of course, a mom. As she maneuvered around campus like a senior on a spring day, Scottline revealed more about her character than her rZsumZ. "I'm tough," Scottline said. But in the same breath, she managed to gush about her latest love and sparkle at the mention of her daughter. Kiki would not count to 50 in yesterday's game of hide and seek. Scottline said she would only count to 42 -- 50 is "too long," she told her mother. But would you expect anything other than constant negotiation from a lawyer's daughter? "I thought it was great," she said. "She's going to try to go into the world and quietly assert herself and her wishes. That's all you want in a parent." And Scottline's respect for her daughter's obstinacy parallels the no-bones-about-it attitude of her own personality. "I'm from a different generation," she added. "Asserting yourself was hard for us." Scottline said she was very different from today's University women. "I don't think there are a lot of young people writing," she said. "The only person I know who is writing is writing the slacker's handbook -- there has to be more to this generation than that." When she began to explain a subplot of the novel she is currently working on, however, the generation gap seemed to disappear. "A love affair," she said. "My next book has a great love in it. You write about what you know."

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