Lisa Scottoline, Legal Thriller and Mystery Writer

Lisa Scottoline was born on July 1, 1955 and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania where she still live on the outskirts of town. She has a degree in English and Law. She was a practicing lawyer before becoming a writer.

She is the divorced mother who needed to find a way to support her child while staying at home and decided to write books to do that. Her daughter is the apple of her eye as you can imagine. Since there were no woman lawyers writing legal thriller books, like John Grisham and Scott Turlow, she decided to give it a go.

It took her three years to get her first novel published and it was nominated for an Edgar Award by Mystery Writer's Of America but it did not win. However a year later her second book "Final Appeal" did win the Edgar Award and she has been winning awards ever since. Finally she got a book on the best selling list of the New York Times with her fifth book, "Mistaken Identity" and has been on their list from then till now.

Her books have plots that twist, great dialogs, and are written with wit and humor. She writes about gutsy female characters who are determined to get the job done against all odds and who experience serious challenges, but never back down.

The Italian she grew up in, with a brother she adores are important to her. She often uses parts of this background in her books. Half way through her life found out she also had a half sister which was a total surprise.

Another thing that shocked her was finding out her grandparents, Giuseppe and Mary Scottoline were both forced to carry alien registrations cards during World War II. She had no idea this happened until recently when going through It was a shock because she had known about the Japanese-Americans but had never heard the Italian- Americans and German-Americans were singled out also. Some of these people were sent to interment camps during that war. She used this research in her book "Killer Smile". She is very thorough in her doing research in all her books no matter what the subject.

Lisa has four dogs and is a dog lover. However she is an animal lover in general and has a couple of kittens and a pony as well.

If you have not read any of Lisa Scottoline's books I highly recommend you do. She is an excellent writer that keeps you turning the pages to see what is going to happen next.