THE INTERN and the Return of the Legal Thriller by Michele Campbell

THE INTERN and the Return of the Legal Thriller

by Michele Campbell

Suits is the biggest show on streaming. John Grisham is writing a sequel to The Firm. Everything old is new again, and that is true a hundred times over for the classic legal thriller. It never really went away. But it’s also back and bigger and better than ever. THE INTERN marks my return to my favorite genre after years of writing psychological suspense. And it feels so right. 

I first fell in love with the legal thriller reading John Grisham back in the day, when I was a law student myself (just like Madison Rivera in THE INTERN.) Okay, so maybe as a baby lawyer, I had a certain professional interest in the genre. But that wasn’t the reason those books thrilled me. The stakes were just so high. Millions of dollars. People’s lives on the line. The villains were not just run-of-the-mill evil. They were diabolical. Smooth and sophisticated and smart. They concocted elaborate schemes, embezzled fortunes, lied and stole and ruined people. And got away with it, until they met their match in the hero, who beat them at their own game. The heroes in legal thrillers were just as flawed as the bad guys. And I loved that, too. The heroes were full of doubts, tempted by the dark side, always on the verge of moral collapse. But in the end, after more twists and turns than you could count, they always found redemption. Beyond the stakes, and the characters, I loved that legal-thriller setting. Grisham wrote authentically of courtrooms and board rooms, mansions and fancy cars and beautiful people in expensive clothes. Of chases and arrests and investigations. And murders. Sublime.

I was so hooked on the legal thriller that I was dying to write one of my own. But I was too busy being a lawyer in real life to find the time. I spent eight years fighting crime as a federal prosecutor in New York, investigating narcotics and gang cases, going to court every day, standing up before juries. I adored every crazy second of it. So when I decided to stay home with my young kids for a while, I finally turned my hand to writing that novel I’d been dreaming of. And of course it was a legal thriller. Write what you know, right? I had the insider knowledge, the experience, and enough material to write a thousand books. My original legal thriller series starring Melanie Vargas, a young Latina prosecutor in New York with twisty cases and a complicated love life, came out in the aughts, written under the name Michele Martinez. It got great visibility and was even optioned for film. 

I ended up going back to law for a while, but I never lost my love of writing. Meanwhile, there was a new genre to obsess over. Call it psychological suspense, domestic noir, psychological thriller. Call it what you will, but Gone Girl changed the crime novel forever. Suddenly, we were all crazy for bad marriages, toxic families, unreliable narrators and frenemies. When I came back to writing, it was in the genre of psychological suspense — my international bestseller, IT’S ALWAYS THE HUSBAND. For the past few years, I’ve had so much fun writing those twisty, pacey, delicious books about everyday people killing the ones they loved. 

But I never got the legal thriller out of my system. Turns out I was just waiting for the right story to pop into my head, so I could blend these two delicious crime genres that I love. THE INTERN is it. Madison Rivera is a young Harvard Law student who lands the internship of a lifetime working for Judge Kathryn Conroy. I’ve been that law student. I’ve worked for a federal judge. Though thankfully I’ve never had the kind of crazy, toxic, deadly secrets that both Madison and the judge have in THE INTERN. Madison’s troubled younger brother Danny has been arrested, and Conroy is the judge on his case. When Danny goes missing after accusing the judge of corruption, Madison’s quest for answers brings her deep into the judge’s glamorous world. Which naturally, is full of corruption and danger. Is Kathryn Conroy a mentor, a victim, or a criminal? Is she trying to help Madison or use her as a pawn? And why is somebody trying to kill her? As the two women circle each other in a dangerous cat-and-mouse game, will they save each other, or will betrayal leave one of them dead? 

THE INTERN is a unique combination of psychological suspense a la Gillian Flynn and authentic, high-stakes legal thriller in the vein of John Grisham. It features two complicated, ambitious women with secrets to hide who have to decide whether to be enemies or allies, villains or heroes. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it.

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A graduate of Harvard University and Stanford Law School, Michele Campbell worked at a prestigious Manhattan law firm before spending eight years fighting crime as a federal prosecutor in New York City. She is the author of The Intern, It’s Always the Husband, She Was the Quiet One, and A Stranger on the Beach.

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Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing