In Hartstone’s The Local (Doubleday), a small Texas town is the center of a patent litigation trial that turns into a murder case.
How did you make intellectual property law suspenseful?
A friend of mine who practices in that field had told me about Marshall, Tex.—this little corner of the state where there were more patent infringement lawsuits than anywhere else in the country, where hundreds of millions of dollars exchange hands every year in lawsuits. All these big corporate law firms come in from out of town, needing a local attorney to help them communicate to the jurors, who are from that town. And I thought, well, that kind of attorney could be a great character. So I mulled it over for a couple of years, and then realized that, as fascinated as I was with patent law, criminal law was probably going to make for a much more intriguing story. And if I killed a character and then took a patent lawyer and put him in the middle of a murder trial, it’d be more interesting than just a patent trial.
How did you get help with some of the legal aspects of the story line?
I have an aunt, Cathy Cannon, who’s a criminal lawyer, and she reads almost everything I write. Early on, I had a problem. This character is accused of murder, but the identity of the victim would make it a federal crime. But I want him to stand trial in this local venue, and I want him to also be subject to the death penalty. At the time, there was no one being executed federally, and so I asked, “What possible reason could there be to make a federal crime a state crime?” She responded, “Well, you’re in Texas, he killed a local hero, and they want him executed. So that’s your reason, the federal prosecutors could actually say, we’ll give it back to the state, because we all agree that we want to see this person executed.”
Might this book be adapted for TV?
I am adapting this into a TV series with the producers of The Good Fight and Your Honor, Robert and Michelle King. They read this book before it was published, and they loved it. They were very encouraging, and so it’s set up with their company, at CBS Studios.
