About the Author

LESLIE BUDEWITZ IS A WRITER AND A PRACTICING lawyer. Her short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Thug Lit, The Whitefish Review, and other journals. Her short nonfiction has been published in the anthologies Cup of Comfort for Cat Lovers and Cup of Comfort for Dog Lovers, Vol. II and in national and regional magazines.

After graduating from Notre Dame Law School in 1984, Leslie clerked for the Washington State Court of Appeals. She is admitted in state and federal courts in Montana and Washington State and the court of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation. She has represented plaintiffs and defendants in a wide variety of civil litigation and represented both felony and misdemeanor criminal defendants. She currently represents plaintiffs and defendants in civil litigation.

She writes the Law & Fiction column in InSinC Quarterly, the Sisters in Crime quarterly, and the Law & Fiction: Getting the Facts Right column in First Draft, the bimonthly newsletter of the Sisters in Crime Guppies chapter. She enjoys working directly with writers, providing research and answering questions about using the law in fiction. Writers with questions related to law in fiction can reach Leslie through her website, www.LawandFiction.com.

Leslie lives in northwest Montana with her husband, a doctor of natural medicine, and their cat. When not writing, she loves to cook, garden, and hike in the mountains outside her door.