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and, you know, somebody said to me, i read this whole book and realized you had covered that, had done it defendantly, and then i realized you were making a point there. so i try not to beat my readers over head, but i do try to get some of that in. because i think that's important. if you're writing books about lawyers and about crime, you know, there are victims. and i do try to set the world right at the end when i possibly can. and that is, as i said earlier, the advantage of writing novels as opposed to trying real cases. the other point i would make -- and everybody's kind of t...

had done it defendantly, and then i realized you were making a point there. so i try not to beat my readers over head, but i do try to get some of that in. because i think that's important. if you're writing books about lawyers and about crime, you know, there are victims. and i do try to set the world right at the end when i possibly can. and that is, as i said earlier, the advantage of writing novels as opposed to trying real cases. the other point i would make -- and everybody's kind of touched upon it here a little bit. lawyers are not portrayed, in many cases, particularly posit...

it's inevitable. i'm getting off the point a little bit here. but at some point i think it was around the time of the o.j. case where you had this confluence of a big public figure, it was a juicy trial, and cable news was just becoming a force. it changed the environment in which we operate, at least criminal system operates. because it's not just cases anymore, it's entertainment. it's a whole media frenzy on big cases. and i don't think that's a very good thing, but that is the environment in which we operate. and lawyers have to deal with that now. >> a very good point. we have s...

and lawyers have to deal with that now. >> a very good point. we have some questions from the audience. i'm going to ask the first one for paulette. in taking tony's essence, who he is as a trial lawyer, how does you tell that story in the book? paulette's book is for sale in the lobby and also at green arcade books here in san francisco. how did you do that? you used your art, obviously, and you used writings. but how did you tell that story? what was your hook? >> well, i am not a particularly cerebral person. the king that connected me with tony to begin with is that i connected w...

all the roles. so you get the full gamut of the human condition going on. i connected with tony at that visceral level. and then i went to a translation process and a sort of distilled, if you will, process of putting it into context. and i was there in many of the trials, the trials that i was present in. so it is storytelling, but it's storytelling from the gut rather than from the head which i kind of call window shopping. i wasn't interested in window shopping tony. i wanted it to be his energy. i wanted it to encapsulate a life force. i wanted it to show the great range of his h...