Devil’s Defense, a compelling courtroom drama by Lori B. Duff
Author Interview + My Thoughts + Book & Author Info + Author Pet Corner!
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Devil’s Defense
Jessica knew that in the town of Ashton, Georgia, the order of worship was first Jesus, second America, and third the high school football coach, with the second two interchangeable if it were a winning season. It was often a winning season.
Jessica Fischer wants nothing more than to break into the male-dominated legal scene and build her law practice in small-town Georgia. And she’s well on her way when the local town hero and football coach, Frank “Tripp” Wishingham III, hires her to represent him in a paternity suit.
The coach is everything Fischer despises: arrogant, sexist and entitled. But it’s her job to make him look good in public, which is made doubly difficult when her burgeoning relationship with a local reporter gets in the way of telling the truth. Are things as black and white as Jessica thinks? And can she find a way to succeed without compromising her own personal values or her personal life?
Fans of “Miracle Creek” by Angie Kim and “Where the Crawdads Sing” by Delia Owens will be intrigued by “Devil’s Defense.” And the book will appeal greatly to Southern readers hungry for authentic stories set in the South, as well as professional women desperate for a relatable protagonist — it’s only the beginning for Jessica Fischer.
To purchase Devil’s Defense, click any of the following links: Amazon, Barnes and Noble & IndieBound
My Thoughts on Devil’s Defense
Lori B. Duff knows her stuff. Her extensive courtroom experience shines in the characters and events in Devil’s Defense.
Jessica Fischer is a complex and dynamic character who readers will root for. Navigating sexism and hero-worship for the football legend in her small, Southern town, the newly minted attorney is faced with ethical decisions as she tries to get a foothold in her private practice.
Everyone deserves representation—it’s one of the central tenants of our legal system—but what’s a girl to do when the only client on her horizon has more charm than morals? Do her job, and do it well.
With as much legal practice as courtroom drama, Duff carefully explores the dynamics of the system through a host of engaging characters. Between attorney Jessica, her paralegal Diane, and the obnoxious high school football coach, the twists and turns the story takes are at times funny, clever, and poignant.
With a vibrant, witty voice and a solid story, Lori B. Duff has created a page turner for lovers of thoughtful character studies with a mystery holding then all together.
Devil’s Defense — Author Interview
Devil’s Defense is set in small-town Georgia. Tell us about Ashton:
Ashton, Georgia, is a town that is experiencing growing pains. It’s far enough away from Atlanta that it’s not quite suburban, but not so far that it’s rural. It’s dragging its way into the twenty-first century.
Ashton is a very traditional place. All the movers and shakers are men, and they all grew up together and go to church together. There isn’t a lot of diversity of thought, so when ‘city girl’ Jessica moves into town, she stands out.
That said, Ashton has a lot of character and a lot of people in it who want to do right. You shouldn’t underestimate them. They’re very loyal and wise, if not worldly.
Devil’s Defense centers on Jessica Fischer, who recently hung out her shingle with the hopes of building a private law practice. What should readers know about Jessica?
Jessica is smart, but doesn’t have a whole lot of life experience outside of her own world. So she can be naïve, since she has trouble seeing outside of her own head. That’s why she needs a friend like Diane Myers who can point out when she’s being obtuse.
She’s very idealistic and hasn’t yet been beaten down by the world: she truly believes she can change things. Once she gets her teeth sunk into something, she is going to see it through, and she will do anything to bully the world into what she sees as ‘right’.
Devil’s Defense brings true-to-life details of the courtroom, and the South, onto the page based on your years as an attorney and judge. Did you find you had to make allowances for how things work in the real world to serve the story? Or were you able to stay true to your own experiences?
I stayed true to my own experiences as best I could, but honestly a lot of legal work is boring. There’s a lot of waiting.
Sometimes I feel like I spend half my day just trying to get other grownups to do the bare minimum of their jobs. Part of the reason why I was inspired to write Devil’s Defense is that I get very frustrated reading and watching media about lawyers and how unrealistic it is. We all have dozens of cases going on at a time. Our clients are wrong about half the time, but we have to go into court and say why they’re right anyway. Not everyone (or even anyone, some days) listens to our advice, then they blame us for things going south.
Problems that have taken years to create are expected to be solved in a week. I tried to work in some of that frustration without being bogged down with the tedious details.
There is a lot of humor woven into Devil’s Defense. How do you balance humor with the seriousness of life and death events?
Frankly, I don’t know how anyone deals with the seriousness of life and death events without humor. For me, humor is a survival tool.
When I first started writing in earnest (around 2012—long story why I can date it) I started out simply writing humor. It felt like an anecdote to what I was doing all day. Lawyers wage war for a living. It’s a very confrontational job. You fight with your friends, voices get raised, and emotions are high. For a while, as a joke, we had a sign in the copy room in our office that said, “Days where no one broke down into tears” like those signs you see in factories about on-the-job injuries. Ours stayed at zero. Every day someone was crying.
Compassion fatigue is a real thing: if you don’t develop a dark sense of humor about the tragedy you see all day, you’ll be miserable.
What do you love about living and working in a small town?
I think the things I like and dislike about it are the same things. I like that my ‘commute’ to and from the office is only five miles with minimal traffic. I dislike that it is hard to get away from work: I rarely go to the grocery store without seeing someone work-related.
I like that it’s easy to make your mark. Sometimes in a bigger place, it can feel like you’re just one more identical herring in a giant school of fish. But in a small town there aren’t enough fish to be anonymous.
I love how safe I feel around here. There is virtually no violent crime here that isn’t domestic. I don’t worry about porch pirates or someone breaking into my house. I like that because of the size of the place, even the necessary bureaucracy isn’t nameless, faceless drones: I know the names of the people who work in the clerks’ offices and they know me, so I can just call and ask questions, and if things go wrong you talk to a person and not a phone tree.
What are you working on now?
I am in the end stages of the editing process for the sequel to Devil’s Defense, which will be called Devil’s Hand and is slated to be released in October 2025.
As soon as I finish that one, I will work on the third in the series, which is now called Devil’s Name, but that may change. I’ve got a barely readable draft of it written so far.
Words of Wisdom for Aspiring Writers:
The first draft is supposed to be bad. You can call it the vomit draft, or the shitty first draft, or whatever, but don’t expect to write a great novel in the first draft. The best you can hope for is good bones for a story. Just get it done.
You can edit and shape something bad, but you can’t do anything with a blank page. I rarely let anyone read what I’ve written until the third draft, and it’s usually the tenth or more that sees the public.
Great Advice!
Author Pet Corner!
Lincoln is a pound puppy that we got from the local animal shelter booth at a craft fair while we were out of town for a family wedding.
We had to sneak him into our fancy-schmancy no pet hotel. It was a whole thing, and his origin story is a good one, though it takes a good thousand words to tell.
We named him Lincoln because at the hotel, we couldn’t walk him because he couldn’t be seen in the lobby. So he left us Lincoln Logs all over the hotel room. We were told he was a beagle mix by the good folks at the shelter, but I don’t know.
He has a lot of Jack Russell in him, and I think he’s part whippet. He has loooooong legs and runs like the wind. His tail never stops wagging, even in his sleep, and he’s never met a stranger. As far as he’s concerned, all humans (except the Amazon driver who is an agent of Satan) are just one more person to love him.
Author of Devil’s Defense — Lori B Duff
Lori B. Duff is a two-time winner of the Georgia Bar Journal’s fiction competition and a popular humor blogger.
Her humorous essays have earned multiple awards, including the Foreword Indies Gold Medal for Humor, as well as first place in the National Society for Newspaper Columnists annual contest in the humor category. In addition to her writing, Duff is a graduate of Duke University and the Emory University School of Law.
She serves as the Managing Partner of Jones & Duff, LLC, and is also a municipal court judge.
Duff has been president of the Georgia Council of Municipal Court Judges and the National Society of Newspaper Columnists and has served in various leadership roles in those and other legal and writing organizations. Learn more at her website loriduffwrites.com.
To learn more about Lori, click any of the following links: Facebook: @loribduffauthor | Threads: @loriduffwrites | Instagram: @loriduffwrites | Twitter: @loribduff
