Compelling Evidence begins with a graphic description of an execution in the gas chamber, but the execution itself has nothing to do with the plot. Why did you begin the book this way?

“Actually, I’ve been criticized in some reviews for that. There were two reasons. In fiction, you have to have a “hook” to pull the reader in, and I felt that there was some nexus with the heart of the story, which is a death penalty trial. The stakes had to be made as clear as possible to the reader as to what was happening here.

I will admit – in the two novels I’ve written – I’ve gone back and done either the prologue or the first chapter fairly late in the book. This is not something that I wrote in the early drafts of the manuscript, but something that I inserted later as I got toward the end of the book actually. And I felt I needed some kind of a charge to get the book going, rather than just a bland opening, and I think it worked for that purpose. I do feel that it added something to the stakes of what the story was about, what risks were involved here. That’s basically why I did it.”