Jane Austen's Bookshelf—Rebecca Romney
Sources:
NPR, Feb 23, 2025: "Rare book dealer Rebecca Romney dedicates a book to the women Jane Austen read"
WSJ, March 15-16, 2025: "Godmothers of the Novel"
NY Times, Feb. 17: "The Forgotten Writers Who Influenced Jane Austen"
LitHub, Feb. 19, 2025: "Who Were the Women Novelists Who Really Inspired Jane Austen? Rebecca Romney on Unearthing a Legacy of Systematic Literary Erasure"
https://lithub.com/jane-austens-forgotten-contemporaries-unearthing-a-legacy-of-systematic-literary-erasure/
Jane Austen's Bookshelf—Rebecca Romney
A chance encounter with Frances Burney's 1778 novel, Evelina, sent rare book dealer Rebecca Romney on a years long quest to find the women writers who influenced Jane Austen's work. One of Romney's specialties is the history of the novel. But names like Burney's were missing from her recollection of Austen's reading list.
"Quickly, I realized I had read all of the men that she had read… and then I was reading about all the women that she loved, and I hadn't read any of them—most of them I hadn't even heard of," Romney said. "So I thought, I need a course correction because I had this gap in my own reading knowledge."
In Jane Austen's Bookshelf, Romney brings overlooked voices to life, spotlighting eight women writers—including Charlotte Lennox, Hannah More, and Maria Edgeworth—who shaped Austen's literary world.
Romney's gap in knowledge about the women Austen read soon had a name. "I realized scholars see it this way too, because these women were so systematically excised from our understanding of the canon and the development of the novel that they gave it a name. That name is the Great Forgetting," she said.
Jane Austen's Bookshelf—Rebecca Romney
Romney's version of Jane Austen's bookshelf is assembled at her bookshop, Type Punch Matrix, in Silver Spring, Maryland. She co-founded the space with Brian Cassidy in 2019. Some of the literary treasures housed there date back to the 16th century.
"Then you start seeing this interaction between the authors, which I think was so fun. It wasn't just everything about Austen. Soon it just becomes its own constellation of writers in the 18th century, specifically how women are talking to each other as artists."
"What I'm trying to do is not only get a sense of what their accomplishments were as writers but also to give them their due, the due that has been taken from them over the hundreds of years in which their reputations have slowly trickled away."
Jane Austen—LitHub (excerpt)
It all started with a book that made me curious.
I was on a house call in Georgetown, invited to browse the personal book collection of a woman who used to be a professional rare book dealer like me. . . . Instead of a flashy modern edition of Pride and Prejudice, this woman had a rather ugly one, bound in drab brown paper boards resembling dilapidated cardboard. It also bore an unusual revised title, Elizabeth Bennet; or, Pride and Prejudice.
Despite its humble appearance, I knew the book was incredibly rare. It was the first edition of Pride and Prejudice published in the United States, from 1832. A woman who kept this book on her shelf knew a good book when she saw it, even if others around her might overlook it.
I looked toward the last stack of books. Three volumes down from the top sat a novel called Evelina by Frances Burney . . . [with an] emerald-green cloth binding . . . This one dated from 1903, a period when UK and US publishers commissioned artists to design eye-catching cloth bindings as a marketing tool (this, before dust jackets rose to dominance). The front board featured a woman poised with a quill pen, dressed in voluminous skirts and a plumed hat. She stood beneath a tree, clusters of leaves spreading across nearly half the binding, all stamped in gilt upon that rich, emerald-green background.
Jane Austen—LitHub (excerpt)
I have no problem admitting that I’ve bought books for their covers. But even when I do, I care about the story in the book—and the story of the book. I want to know what the book is about. What happens? How was it different than the stories that came before? How was it similar?
I want to know about the author. Who was she? How did she come to be a writer?
I want to know about the book itself. How was it made? What does that say about its publisher’s view of its target audience? I want to know about the book’s publication. What did people think about it then? What do they think of it now? I want to know where it has been. Who owned this book? How did they care for it (or not)? Why was it saved for so long? To be a rare book dealer is to appreciate that the book itself—the object can be as interesting as its text.
Jane Austen—LitHub (excerpt)
[Then] I ran across something electric . . . The star evidence: the phrase “pride and prejudice” came from Burney’s second novel, Cecilia (1782).
Frances Burney, it turns out, had been one of Austen’s favorite authors. She wrote courtship novels very like Austen’s, focused on young heroines navigating the difficulties of finding love. Or rather, Austen wrote books very like hers: Burney was one of the most successful novelists of Austen’s lifetime.
After Evelina crossed my desk, . . . I returned to Austen’s books and began to observe new traits in them. Every character in Northanger Abbey who isn’t a boor sings the praises of the gothic writer Ann Radcliffe. The play that causes so much controversy in Mansfield Park is in fact a real one adapted by the playwright Elizabeth Inchbald.
I headed to my bookshelf and pulled off a 2005 book on the English novel written for students “by one of the world’s leading literary theorists,” as the back panel assured me. I opened the first page. The period when Austen did most of her formative reading “was one of the most fertile, diverse, and adventurous periods of novel-writing in English history,” the author asserted. . . . Austen read William Shakespeare, John Milton, Daniel Defoe, and Samuel Richardson, all authors I had read. She also read Frances Burney, Ann Radcliffe, Charlotte Lennox, Hannah Moore, Charlotte Smith, Elizabeth Inchbald, Hester Piozzi, and Maria Edgeworth, all authors I hadn’t. They were part of Austen’s bookshelf, but they had disappeared entirely from mine.
Jane Austen—LitHub (excerpt)
When I investigated further, I learned that Austen had done all this reading during the first time in English history when more women published novels than men.
Yet in my own reading, I had skipped them so entirely that it seemed almost intentional. And it was: the critics who shaped our modern idea of the novel in English so frequently dismissed women writers that the systematic excising has a name. It’s called the Great Forgetting. Only Austen survived that period, becoming “the first great women writer in English”—even though there is a passage in one of her own novels that explicitly celebrated the work of women writers who had come before her. Austen gave me a hint of my mistake in, Northanger Abbey:
while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens—there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labor of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.
Jane Austen—LitHub (excerpt)
“I am no novel-reader—I seldom look into novels—Do not imagine that I often read novels—It is really very well for a novel.” Such is the common cant. “And what are you reading, Miss—?”
“Oh! It is only a novel!” replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame.
“It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda”; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humor, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language.
Now, had the same young lady been engaged with a volume of the Spectator, instead of such a work, how proudly would she have produced the book, and told its name.
In this passage, Austen had already recognized a mechanism of the Great Forgetting: “a thousand pens” talk of works like Milton’s Paradise Lost, while embarrassed to admit to reading novels. Austen felt no such shame. Novels display “some of the greatest powers of the mind,” she argued.
And then she gave examples. Cecilia (1782) was Frances Burney’s second novel; Camilla (1796) was her third. Belinda (1801) was the second novel of another woman writer, Maria Edgeworth.
Jane Austen—LitHub (excerpt)
To call Austen “the first great woman writer in English,” really, is to call her the first British woman accepted in the Western canon. I kept investigating, and soon learned that other scholars had been noticing these clues in Austen’s writings.
I wanted to know who these women were, what they wrote, and why they were no longer part of the canon. . . . these women weren’t remembered because they weren’t interesting enough, or their works weren’t good enough. I did not find a group of hacks whose devices and themes existed only to reach full perfection in Austen’s use of them. Instead, I found the turning points. I traced moments when these women were attacked, elided, demeaned, and displaced from the canon. In some cases, I also saw moments when they made their way back to the canon, championed by a particular critic or given new life with a popular reprint.
I’m confident she would have been horrified to hear today’s popular opinion of Frances Burney or Maria Edgeworth—when they are remembered at all. As repayment for what she had given me, I hoped I could offer Austen this in return: a collection that reunites the novels she read, and a book honoring her own favorite authors. I took my Sherlockian skills from the rare book trade and turned them to this investigation. I wanted to know who these women were, what they wrote, and why they were no longer part of the canon. I would read their books and I would collect copies that appealed to me for their historical interest. I would fill Jane Austen’s Bookshelf.
Camino Ghosts location
The true story is about Dark Isle, a sliver of a barrier island not far off the North Florida coast. It was settled by freed slaves three hundred years ago, and their descendants lived there until 1955, when the last one was forced to leave.
Camino Island (fictional) is probably based on Amelia Island which offers, "In addition to beautiful beaches and tranquil nature trails and waterways, Amelia Island is home to world-class golf, distinctive dining and unique shopping."
Amelia Island is a part of the Sea Islands chain that stretches along the East Coast of the United States from South Carolina to Florida; it is the southernmost of the Sea Islands, and the northernmost of the barrier islands on Florida's Atlantic coast.
Lying in Nassau County, Florida, it is 13 miles long and approximately 4 miles wide at its widest point. The communities of Fernandina Beach, Amelia City, and American Beach are located on the island, and it is in the Jacksonville metropolitan area.
https://www.ameliaisland.com/
Interview, 2022
John Grisham is at his best when he works racial injustice into his stories. In a 2022 interview, Grisham said he “grew up in the Jim Crow South. A very segregated, racist society was almost in my DNA. It’s a long struggle to overcome that and to look back at the way I was raised and not be resentful toward my parents and other people who helped raise me for their extreme racism. It was such a hard right-wing, racist society that I grew up in.”
Slavery in Florida
The first European known to have explored the coasts of Florida was the Spanish explorer Ponce de León, who likely ventured in 1513 as far north as the vicinity of the future St. Augustine, naming the peninsula he believed to be an island "La Florida" and claiming it for the Spanish crown.
It is likely that slaves were included in the voyage, but they were not recorded.
When the Spanish founded the colonial settlement of San Agustín in 1565, the site already had enslaved Native Americans, whose ancestors had migrated from Cuba.
The Spaniards did not bring many slaves to Florida as there was no work for them to do—no mines and no plantations. For the same reason very few Spaniards came to Florida; there were only three towns in the colony, supporting military/naval outposts: St. Augustine, St. Marks, and what is today Pensacola.
Under Spanish colonial rule, the enslaved in Florida had rights. They could marry, own property, and purchase their own freedom. Free blacks, as long as they were Catholic, were not subject to legal discrimination. No one was born into slavery. Mixed "race" marriages were not illegal, and mixed "race" children could inherit property.
Slavery in Florida
In October 1687, eleven enslaved Africans made their way from Carolina to Florida in a stolen canoe, and were emancipated by the Spanish authorities. A year later, Major William Dunlop, an officer in the Carolina militia, arrived in Florida to ask for compensation for Spanish attacks on Carolina and the return of the Africans to their enslaver.
The Spanish chose to compensate Morton instead, submitting a report to King Charles II who in 1693 issued a decree freeing all slaves escaping from English North America who accepted Catholicism.
Since 1688, Spanish Florida had attracted numerous fugitive slaves who escaped from the British North American colonies. Once the slaves reached Florida, the Spanish freed them if they converted to Roman Catholicism; males of age had to complete a military obligation.
Many settled in Gracia Real de Santa Teresa de Mose, the first settlement of free blacks in North America, near St. Augustine. The church started recording baptisms and deaths there in 1735, and a fort was built in 1738, part of the perimeter defenses of San Agustin.
Slavery in Florida
Second Spanish occupation (1783–1821)
Former slaves also found refuge among the Creek and Seminole, Native Americans who had established settlements in Florida at the invitation of the Spanish government. In 1771, Governor John Moultrie wrote to the Board of Trade that "It has been a practice for a good while past, for negroes to run away from their Masters, and get into the Indian towns, from whence it proved very difficult to get them back." When British colonial officials in Florida pressured the Native Americans to return the fugitive slaves, they replied that they had "merely given hungry people food, and invited the slaveholders to catch the runaways themselves."
The Spanish had established outposts in Florida to prevent others from having safe ports to attack Spanish treasure fleets in the Caribbean and in the strait between Florida and the Bahamas. Florida did not produce anything the Spaniards wanted. The three garrisons were a financial drain, and it was not felt desirable to send settlers or additional garrisons. The Crown decided to cede the territory to the United States. It accomplished this through the Adams–Onís Treaty of 1819, which took effect in 1821.
Treatment of Blacks under Spanish rule
Under the Spanish, enslaved workers had rights: to marry, to own property, to buy their own freedom. They were not chattel. Free Blacks, as long as they accepted Catholicism, were not subject to legal discrimination. No one was born into slavery. Mixed "race" marriages were not illegal, and mixed "race" children could inherit property,
During the second Spanish period, when slaves continued to escape from their British, then American, owners and take refuge in Florida, the North American slave trade was to a large extent centered on Florida. Besides those seeking to recover escaped slaves, the newly enslaved could be freely imported to Florida from Africa, and planters and their representatives went to Florida to buy them and then smuggle them into the U.S.
At the center of Florida's slave trade was the colorful trader and slavery defender, Quaker Zephaniah Kingsley, owner of slaving vessels. He treated his enslaved well, allowed them to save for and buy their freedom (at a 50% discount), and taught them crafts like carpentry, for which reason his highly-trained, well-behaved slaves sold for a premium. After Florida became American, Kingsley, after trying unsuccessfully to prevent Florida from treating free Blacks as unwelcome, left for what at the time was Haiti (today the Dominican Republic).
Florida—Pre-Columbian Settlement and Colonization
Fort George Island, located in Duval County several miles northeast of Jacksonville, is a marsh island at the mouth of the St. Johns River, surrounded by tidal estuaries, Little Talbot Island, and the Nassau River.
The north Atlantic coast of Florida had been inhabited for approximately 12,000 years when Spanish explorer Ponce de León landed near Cape Canaveral in 1513. The Spanish met the Saturiwa, a Timucua tribe, the largest group of indigenous people in the region, numbering about 14,000.
Bands of Timucua extended into central Florida and south Georgia. An estimated 35 chiefdoms existed in the territory; their societies were complex with large villages sustained by fishing, hunting, and agriculture, but they frequently warred with each other and unrelated groups of Native Americans.
The Spanish concentrated their efforts of exploration and settlement on the Gulf Coast of Florida. By 1562, Jean Ribault led French explorers to the mouth of the St. Johns River where they built a garrison in 1564, calling it Fort Caroline. Within 200 years the population of the indigenous people of Florida was decimated by disease and constant fighting. They left behind evidence of their existence in massive middens or shell mounds filled with discarded food byproducts. On Fort George Island, the shells were primarily oysters.
Florida—Pre-Columbian Settlement and Colonization
Ownership of Florida transferred to England in 1763. Spanish settlers had established missions—including one on Fort George Island, but their frequent battles with the Timucua and a decline in mission activity curbed development. When the British controlled Florida, they established several plantations in the region. Richard Hazard owned the first plantation on Fort George Island in 1765, harvesting indigo with several dozen enslaved Africans. Spain regained ownership of Florida in 1783 after the American Revolution and recruited new Americans with promises of free land.
In 1793, American Revolution veteran John McQueen was lured to Fort George Island from South Carolina by the Spanish government, which rewarded McQueen with the island. McQueen settled with 300 slaves and constructed a large house in a unique architectural style exhibiting four corner pavilions surrounding a great room. McQueen was soon bankrupt due to misfortunes, and the possession of the plantation turned over to John McIntosh from Georgia who revived it in 1804. McIntosh, however, took a leading role in the Patriot War, an insurgency by Americans to hasten the annexation of Florida to the United States. The rebellion was unsuccessful, and McIntosh fled back into Georgia to escape punishment from the Spanish.
Kingsley Plantation
Kingsley Plantation (also known as the Zephaniah Kingsley Plantation Home and Buildings) is the site of a former estate on Fort George Island, in Duval County, Florida, named for its developer and most famous owner, Zephaniah Kingsley, who spent 25 years there. Located at the northern tip of Fort George Island at Fort George Inlet, it is part of the Timucuan Ecological and Historic Preserve managed by the U.S. National Park Service.
Kingsley's house is the oldest plantation house still standing in Florida, and the solidly-built village of slave cabins is one of the best preserved in the United States. It is also "the oldest surviving antebellum Spanish Colonial plantation in the United States."
The plantation originally occupied the entirety of Fort George Island, described variously as occupying "750 acres more or less." According to park literature, most of it has been taken back over by forest; the structures and grounds of the park now comprise approximately 60 acres.
Evidence of pre-Columbian Timucua life is on the island, as are the remains of a Spanish mission named San Juan del Puerto. Under British rule in 1765, a plantation was established that cycled through several owners while Florida was transferred back to Spain and then the United States.
The longest span of ownership was under Kingsley and his family, a polygamous and multiracial household controlled by and resistant to the issues of race and slavery.
Kingsley Plantation
The principal business at the Kingsley Plantation was slaves: buying, selling, and training them. Kingsley's slaves commanded a premium in the market. Raising salable cotton was a secondary business. Because they were very isolated, they also had to raise their food, in small gardens.
Free blacks and several private owners lived at the plantation until it was purchased by the State of Florida in 1955, and acquired by the National Park Service in 1991.
The most prominent features of Kingsley Plantation are the owner's house—a structure of architectural significance built probably between 1797 and 1798 that is cited as the oldest surviving plantation house in the state. It also has an attached kitchen house, barn, and the remains of 25 anthropologically valuable slave cabins that endured beyond the U.S. Civil War.
The foundations of the house, kitchen, barn, and the slave quarters were constructed of durable tabby concrete. Archeological evidence found in and around the slave cabins has given researchers insight into African traditions among slaves who had recently arrived in North America.
Kingsley Plantation
Kingsley wrote a defense of slavery and the three-tier social system that acknowledged the rights of free people of color that existed in Florida under Spanish rule.
Kingsley Plantation was not his only or even his primary plantation. His plantation on Drayton Island has not been studied. "At the other end of Fort George, now Batten Island, he built himself a house of some size, which is now [1878] in ruins; there lived Flora, his black mistress. He divided his time about equally between the two places."
"In the 1830 census he owned only 39 slaves at the present Fort George site, but 188 at a little-known San José plantation, in Nassau County. In 1836 he moved his entire family from Florida, since Kingsley's free Blacks were ever more unwelcome and insecure, to a plantation called Mayorasgo de Koka, at the time in Haiti but from the 1840s in the Dominican Republic. Little remains of that plantation.
Kingsley's family
Born in Bristol, England and educated in London after his family moved to colonial South Carolina, Zephaniah Kingsley established himself as a slave trader and shipping magnate, which allowed him to travel widely. He settled on Fort George Island in 1814 after leasing it from McIntosh.
Kingsley owned several plantations around the lower St. Johns River in what is today Jacksonville, and Drayton Island in central Florida; two of them may have been managed part-time by his wife, a former slave named Anna Jai. Kingsley married Anna in 1806 when she was 13 years old, recently arrived in Cuba from West Africa. He freed her in 1811 and charged her with running his Laurel Grove plantation at Doctors Lake in modern-day Orange Park. His legal emancipation submitted to the Spanish colonial government read:
Let it be known that I . . . possessed as a slave a black woman called Anna, around eighteen years of age, bought as a bozal [newly imported African] in the port of Havana from a slave cargo, who with the permission of the government was introduced here; the said black woman has given birth to three mulatto children: George, about 3 years 9 months, Martha, 20 months old, and Mary, one month old. And regarding the good qualities shown by the said black woman, the nicety and fidelity which she has shown me, and for other reasons, I have resolved to set her free . . . and the same to her three children.
Kingsley's family
Marriages between white plantation owners and African women were common in East Florida. The Spanish government provided for a separate class of free people of color, and encouraged slaves to purchase their freedom. Slavery under Spain in Florida was not considered a lifelong condition, and free blacks were involved in the economic development of the region, many of them owning their own slaves.
Anna oversaw 60 slaves at Fort George Island who grew cotton, citrus, corn, sugarcane, beans, and potatoes. John Maxwell, fourth child, was born in 1824 when Kingsley and Anna lived on Fort George Island. Kingsley also maintained relationships with three other African women who acted as co-wives or concubines. Anna remained the matriarch in the polygamous family. Historian Daniel Schafer posits that Anna would have been familiar with the concepts of polygamy and marrying a slave master to acquire one's freedom. Visitors to the plantation were invited to a dinner table where Kingsley displayed his multi-racial children with pride. He provided them with the best education he could afford, and considered them a shield from any potential racial uprising.
Ethnographers studying slavery at Kingsley Plantation characterized Kingsley as a man of complex paradoxes, defiantly proud of his success as a slaveholder, yet dedicated to his multiracial family. He published a defense of slavery in 1828, rationalizing slavery as a necessary condition for any society, beneficial to owner and slave alike, and to the overall economy.
Kingsley's family
He did not consider race the only factor that should determine servitude status, writing, "Few, I think will deny that color and condition, if properly considered, are two very separate qualities . . . our legislators . . . have mistaken the shadow for the substance, and confounded together two very different things; thereby substantiating by law a dangerous and inconvenient antipathy, which can have no better foundation than prejudice."
In 1823 President James Monroe appointed Kingsley to Florida's Territorial Council, where he tried to persuade them to define the rights of free people of color. When it became apparent that they could not, he resigned. The council passed laws that increasingly restricted the rights which free blacks enjoyed under Spanish control. The treatise was Kingsley's response to these restrictions; he favored the Spanish three-tier system of white landowners, black slaves, and freed blacks. The pamphlet was reprinted again in 1834, and Southerners used its arguments to defend slavery in debates leading to the Civil War.
Kingsley's family
Kingsley died while en route to New York for a land deal. Anna (his wife) returned to Florida in 1846 to settle an inheritance dispute with some of her husband's white relatives; because the will had been made under Spanish law, when inheritance by free blacks was legal, the court ruled in her favor and control of the Kingsley's holdings in Florida remained with her and her children for several years. His son sold the Fort George Island plantation and moved to St Augustine.
Anna moved with about 70 former slaves to the Arlington neighborhood of Jacksonville, where she lived out her remaining years.
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Legal Procedurals—characteristics (AI)
Legal mysteries, often called legal thrillers, share key characteristics with the broader mystery genre, focusing on the protagonist, often a lawyer, uncovering the truth through investigation and legal proceedings. They feature suspense, twists, and often involve complex legal procedures leading to courtroom showdowns where justice prevails.
Protagonist as an Attorney: The main character is typically a lawyer, whether a prosecutor, defense attorney, or judge, who is central to uncovering the truth and solving the mystery.
Mystery and Clues: While similar to traditional mysteries in that they involve a mystery to be solved, legal thrillers often withhold vital information from the reader until the final courtroom reveal, unlike traditional mysteries where clues are more obvious.
Suspense and Plot Twists: Legal thrillers are known for their suspenseful plots, which often involve twists, turns, and escalating stakes for the protagonist.
Legal Procedurals—characteristics (AI)
Courtroom Proceedings: A significant portion of the story, especially towards the end, takes place in the courtroom, where the attorney's skills and knowledge of legal procedures are crucial.
Legal Procedures and Terminology: Legal thrillers often incorporate realistic legal language, procedures, and courtroom dynamics, adding to the authenticity and suspense.
Justice Prevails: A common theme is the triumph of justice through the protagonist's efforts, despite adversarial forces and legal challenges.
Legal Procedurals—characteristics (AI)
The genre came about in the 16th century with the publication of short stories and novels based on court cases taking place at the time. The earliest written version of legal thrillers came in the form of plays and stories printed in the newspaper dating back to the mid-1550s.
One of the first authors to bring the legal thriller into existence as a genre was Wilkie Collins in the 1850s. Collins learned from another writer interested in the genre—Charles Dickens.
Collins's first books with a legal thriller storyline are The Woman in White and The Moonstone; they incorporate the testimonies of various characters to show the storyline of a detective investigating a crime, finding a suspect innocent, and generating a storyline of suspense.
In the 20th Century, one of the most popular authors in legal fiction was Melville Davisson Post. His plots were notoriously fast-paced yet easy to follow as seen in his novel Corpus Delicti where he showcases a calm, collected, intelligent lawyer who advises his clients to go to extreme lengths to defend his case. Erle Stanley Gardner with his Perry Mason series is yet another example.
In 1958, author and former judge, John D. Voelker wrote Anatomy of a Murder about Paul Biegler, a lawyer who defends a man accused of murdering someone to protect his wife. It became known as one of the most realistic legal thrillers for its thorough investigation and use of evidence to find the truth and defend an unlikable character.
Legal Procedurals—characteristics (AI)
According to GoodReads, the top five "Best Legal Thrillers" include:
A Time to Kill by John Grisham ,
The Firm by Robin Waterfield,
A Pitch for Justice by Harold Kasselman,
The Street Lawyer by John Gisham, and
The Dravidian by Kalyan Kankanala.
Another top legal thriller is To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee.
The legal thriller genre has impacted literature, film, and television. From its early exploration of social justice through novels such as Presumed Innocent and To Kill a Mockingbird to its influence on contemporary media, the genre has not only entertained but also educated audiences on legal intricacies and the moral dilemmas experienced in the courtroom.
Legal thriller—characteristics (mysteryandsuspense.com)
Respect for the Protagonist
Typically the main character is ethically grounded; often a prosecutor, dragged into dangerous circumstances, such as Rusty Sabich in Scott Turow’s Presumed Innocent.
But even more frequent than the prosecutor, defense attorneys are popular modern day main characters. Readers cannot get enough of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch, and John Grisham’s Jake Brigace.
But often the protagonist is an attorney who is not part of the criminal justice system, but is rather working in private practice, trying to find civil justice. Lisa Scottoline writes a series called Rosato & Associates, and each novel involves a different main character in a firm run by Benedetta Rosato. Often a client has been wronged, and the attorney seeks justice on behalf of their client, while getting caught up in some sort of nefarious web of events.
Legal thriller—characteristics (mysteryandsuspense.com)
Fogginess
Not literally fog, but metaphorical, around the storyline and characters. Fogginess may be created by switching back and forth between character’s perspectives. Or the fogginess is created by a twisted timeline, or the circumstance of blurred lines and ethics.
The Legal Twist
The legal thriller may or may not have an actual courtroom scene, but often has some sort of legal twist. For example, in the movie, My Cousin Vinny, the art of cross examination, the concept of voir dire, and the unreliability of bystander witnesses are all woven into the story.
Legal concepts such as these, or others such as double jeopardy, or whether a piece of evidence is inadmissible because it was obtained illegally, might drive the storyline.
Sometimes the legal twist is as simple as a ruling on what documents may be discovered in a civil case, or as twisted as tampering with a jury or the judge. Whatever the legal twist raised, it is a critical element.
Legal thriller—characteristics (mysteryandsuspense.com)
Suspense Builds and Pace Quickens
It’s never a simple straight storyline in a good legal thriller. Rather it’s like a strand of DNA, full of circular twists and turns. As a great legal thriller progresses, the protagonist has more on the line, more at risk with each page we turn. Blackmail, kidnapping, financial fraud, murders, or other additional crimes are added ingredients in a storyline already near the boiling point. All of these elements complicate the story, quicken the pace, and add suspense.
Justice Prevails
It is the reader’s search for justice, for truth, for the “right” to prevail that is one the critical components that keeps us turning the pages. Whatever role the protagonist has, they are acting on behalf of justice. They are preventing a wrong from occurring, or they are undoing a wrong, like someone wrongly accused or convicted of a crime.
But justice doesn’t always happen in the courtroom. Victor Methos’ thriller, The Neon Lawyer, involves defending a woman who allegedly murdered the man who killed her six-year-old child. Is vigilante justice acceptable? Often what constitutes justice is up for discussion, or a theme driving the novel.
Legal thriller—characteristics (mysteryandsuspense.com)
A Loveable Ending
What if Mitch McDeere hadn’t had gotten away with the money at the end of John Grisham’s first bestseller, The Firm? What if the bad guys ended up in jail and Mitch McDeere went back to private practice, working long hours, caught in the rat race of life. Would we have been so in love as a culture with the young John Grisham’s writing?
He monopolizes the bestselling list of legal thrillers, and part of that is he knows how to give us the happy ever after ending, the ending that leaves us with hope.
Next Week:
Discussion of Camino Ghosts, John Grisham