Indulge me, please, in first acknowledging and thanking these most fabulous members of my family: my husband, William Matturro, for believing and loving and listening and being my living dictionary and never once complaining when I quit my day job to write mysteries; my parents, John and Della Hamner, who have bestowed on me many gifts, including their lifelong examples of honesty, compassion, and hard work, and for banning television from my childhood home until I was addicted to books; my brother, William Hamner, for not letting go and for being, unfailingly, friend and fan; and Mike Lehner, who with no blood or marriage ties to make him part of my family simply became so through the force of enduring friendship.
In addition to the help and support of my family, in writing this book I was blessed to have the help of friends, fellow lawyers, the HarperCollins family, and even perfect strangers. I cannot thank each of you enough but will try once more.
Steven Babitsky, esquire and president of SEAK, Inc., and a man that as of this writing I still have not met face to face, provided a most gracious gift in enthusiastically awarding an excerpt of this book first prize in the SEAK National Legal Fiction Writing for Lawyers Contest. Not only was he one of the judges in that contest, but he became chief cheerleader for me during a low point when, by phone and e-mail, he strongly encouraged me to finish the book and offered his help to me in getting it published.
The SEAK prize proved to be my toe in the door with Carolyn Marino, my editor and a vice president at HarperCollins. Not only did Carolyn let me sneak in without an agent, she has edited, encouraged, brainstormed, and answered a hundred questions or more, all with gentle good graces and patience. Her time and talents made this book sharper, funnier, and immeasurably better. I offer sincerest thanks to both Carolyn and her able assistant, Jennifer Civiletto, who not only has her own way with words and an instinct about plots but also could and did answer every question within minutes.
It would be wholly remiss of me not to acknowledge and thank Gary Larsen, one of my former law partners and the funniest lawyer I’ve ever met, perhaps even the funniest person I’ve ever met, for the loan of his “Anything wrong with your mouth?” story. Thank you, Gary.
Martin Levin, lawyer and retired publisher and author of Be Your Own Literary Agent, shared his vast knowledge with me, both through his book and his words. I had the great pleasure of assisting him in revising his book and researching another, and the lessons learned during those months have proved invaluable. His book Be Your Own Literary Agent, his advice, and his friendship helped me navigate wholly new waters.
On a legal note, let me acknowledge that the type of brain-damaged baby case that Lilly defends in this novel would more than likely be outside of the tort system under Florida’s current law. In an attempt to curb the costs of liability insurance and create a no-fault system for catastrophic birth-related neurological injuries, that state adopted the Florida Birth-Related Neurological Injury Compensation Plan, Chapter 766, Florida Statutes, in which an administrative law judge determines such claims rather than a jury.
Perhaps the hardest job of the friends and spouse of any writer is that of telling the writer that something in a manuscript doesn’t work. And that job fell repeatedly to Bill, my husband, and Mike Lehner, my friend. Both men had to convince me that about ten thousand words of the first draft of Skinny-dipping were utter garbage and had to go. For that unsparing honesty, I thank you both.
And on that note, let me end where I began: with my family. My husband, Bill, and my father, John, proved repetitively to be talented sounding boards and editors. Their logical minds, their command of grammar, and their awesome vocabularies kept me from many a stumble. My mother, Della Johnson Hamner, proved to have the ablest ear for dialect and language, and thus, taught me early in my writing to reach for exactly the right word. My brother, Lieutenant William Hamner of the Selma, Alabama, police department, served earnestly as my technical adviser and helped me rewrite my police officer’s dialogue to realistically reflect the speech patterns of that honorable profession. There was no detail too small, no question too obscure, and no forensics query too weird for my brother to answer for me.