Diane Capri - She Knows Jack

Lawyer turned New York Times and USA Today Bestselling novelist Diane Capri calls herself “a kind of Martian – someone who doesn’t think like the crowd.” Her ability to see hidden relationships others often miss served her well in her career as an attorney, where she ranked in the top 1% of lawyers nationwide. Her unique perspective is also reflected in her writing, tales she hopes will make readers take a closer look at what they assume to be true. And her refusal to accept things at face value has set her on a literary quest to uncover the secret life of one of crime fiction’s most mysterious and elusive characters.

After graduating cum laude from Detroit’s Wayne Law School, Capri spent nearly 13 years working for a Detroit law firm before going into private practice. Although she was always a voracious reader, her writing was limited to non-fiction until a business catastrophe changed the course of her life. In the early nineties, she relocated to Central Florida at the request of her largest client. When that client later went bankrupt, destroying her legal practice, Capri turned to writing mystery/suspense novels “so that I could restore order to an unjust world, and maybe provide a little literary catharsis for my dead law practice.” While rebuilding her practice, she penned two Florida mystery series featuring female protagonists: Judge Wilhemina Carson and Attorney Jennifer Lane.

After joining the newly-formed International Thriller Writers in 2004, Capri met and began a longstanding friendship with fellow writer Lee Child, #1 New York Times Bestselling author of the Jack Reacher thrillers. Reacher, Child’s shadowy anti-hero who lives by his own rules and metes out justice without regard for legalities, became a source of fascination for Capri. “Jack Reacher is a character as old as time - a stranger who rides into town, straightens things out and leaves,” she explains. “I thought it would be interesting to explore how a man like this would impact the people he interacted with, so I asked Lee where Reacher spent his time between books. As we talked about it, an idea came to me – that the people who meet Jack are forever changed, that crime begets crime, and someone would want to get even.” That idea was the catalyst for Don’t Know Jack, the first in what would become Capri’s “Hunt for Jack Reacher” series.

Don’t Know Jack introduces FBI Special Agent Kim Otto, the antithesis of Jack Reacher. According to Capri, “I made Kim the opposite of Reacher in every way. She’s driven and ambitious, plays by the book, and has strong family connections. Even though she may be afraid, she does what she has to do. I think that makes her even braver than Reacher, and she’s going to need it!”  Kim and her partner, Agent Carlos Gaspar, are assigned to investigate Jack Reacher. This sets into motion a chess-like game of cat and mouse, with each move bringing them closer to the cagey Reacher.  Lee Child praised the novel as “Full of thrills and tension, but smart and human, too.” The book has become a huge reader favorite worldwide. The second Reacher novel, Get Back Jack, was another bestseller. It follows Lee Child’s characters from his novels Bad Luck and Trouble.

In addition to her Reacher books, Capri released Fatal Distraction the first in a new series featuring Jess Kimball, a victim’s rights advocate Capri says is “like Jack Reacher, only nicer.”  Fatal Distraction opened at #3 on Amazon.  Capri is also publishing a serial novel similar to Veronica Mars titled False Truth featuring rookie multimedia journalist Jordan Fox.

Besides providing an entertaining reading experience, Capri wants her books to make readers challenge their own assumptions, particularly in matters concerning justice. “People often accept things at face value, but there’s always another side to the story,” she says. She hopes that readers will join her characters as they strive to grasp what seems to lie just beyond their reach.

For more about Diane Capri, visit her website at www.dianecapri.com.