You are solely responsible for me becoming an avid reader! I love your books! Thank you ! Your characters and their setting appear so incredibly well researched, I'm curious about the amount of spent researching vs writing?

Lisa Gardner I love to research! It's my favorite part of the writing process. I generally start a new book late fall, early winter. First step is to identify what I need to learn. Generally I have a rough idea for a crime that's been inspired by real life. For my upcoming Feb. release NEVER TELL, it involved a woman who just shot her husband, after ten years ago having 'accidentally' shot her father. How many accidents can one woman have?

I bring my fictional crime to detectives, local law enforcement (in this case also a lawyer) to ask how such a situation would be handled. Given I would have two crime scenes, the house where the woman's father died ten years ago, and the house where her husband is shot now, I picked two houses from online real estate guides and got to know the layouts very well. That helped me plot out both murders--and led to new ideas for each.

Do I make some mistakes? Sure. And yes, DNA results are faster in my novels than in the real world. The books have to be page turners, versus real policing which is pretty slow. But I do my best to follow accurate procedures and learn as much as I can. Glad it works for you!

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