Thriller: Stories to Keep You Up All Night

M. Diane Vogt

Legal thrillers have always provided high drama and intense conflict. As a child, M. Diane Vogt was a devoted fan of Perry Mason. Every week, Vogt and her dad would watch Erle Stanley Gardner's Mason outsmart the bad guys on television, matching wits with Mason in the process. Those evenings were at least in part responsible for Vogt becoming a lawyer and, many years later, writing legal thrillers. She is the author of the highly acclaimed and popular Judge Wilhelmina Carson series.

Vogt believes that fictionalization of the legal world is necessary to good stories. But, like Gardner, she takes little dramatic license with the lawyers she portrays and the world they inhabit. From an insider's perspective, she shows what actually happens in lawsuits, courtrooms and lawyers' offices, not just in criminal matters, but in civil cases-where most people collide head-on with the law.

Karen Ann Brown is a young lawyer disillusioned with the law's compromises enough to leave her job as a prosecutor and strike out on her own. She now works as a "recovery specialist," with a cover identity as a travel writer. Karen is forced to make tough choices when her clients' needs are thwarted by gaping holes in the law, particularly concerning children abducted by their parents. Surviving Toronto was inspired by the plight of Vogt's good friend, who was embroiled in a futile ten-year custody battle. It's a tale of irrational anger and rage, something all too familiar to many divorces. But, luckily, Karen Brown is watching.