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Find out how life as a prosecutor helped shape Jilliane Hoffman's debut thriller Retribution in our exclusive interview...

How do you describe this story?
I describe it as a legal, psychological suspense thriller. It’s a combination of the writing styles of three of my favorite authors: John Grisham, Thomas Harris, and James Patterson. It has a little legal, a little police work, and a lot of suspense.

Why did you choose Retribution as the title?
According to the Florida penal system, one of the purposes of prison sentencing is retribution. And, of course, it’s also the ultimate goal of the prosecutor in the story. So it seemed an apt title.

Where did the idea for this story come from?
I had thought of the premise of Retribution for years: what would happen if the persecuted-the victim-became the prosecutor? Would justice always steer their actions, or would hatred? Knowing that the criminal justice system is far from perfect, and the guilty do, in fact, walk away free on technicalities, I took that initial premise and began to wonder what a person would do when faced with that possibility, and would their choice for justice be any different if the crime were more heinous? Would it be more acceptable?

As an Assistant State Attorney in Miami, and later as an advisor to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, you were directly responsible for making justice happen. And yet you say an arrest or conviction was all too often bittersweet. Why?
Because even if you get what you’re seeking-even if you put the person responsible for the crime in jail-you still have a victim who has to battle every day with the emotional and physical scars left by whatever was done to him or her. The bad guy might be in jail but the victim still has to recover, and sometimes that never happens. And that’s on a good day; that’s assuming you even get a conviction to begin with. Sometimes juries will toss out the baby with the bathwater and you don’t get a full verdict on all counts, or, for reasons known only to them, they’ll let the criminal go. Then you have to go back and explain to the victim that the system didn’t work. They still have their scars, but now they also have the feeling there’s been no justice at all.

That must be one of the hardest things to do as a prosecutor.
There has always been a very high burnout rate among cops and prosecutors. A lot of assistant state attorneys do their 3-year commitment and then leave for that very reason. The way most veteran prosecutors overcome burnout is to focus on the good they’re doing for society. They stay on the job in the hope that the justice they get for some victims will outweigh the injustice done to others who are let down by the system. Still, it’s tough. I’d go home sometimes and tell my husband about my day, or he’d see photographs from a case I’d been working on, and he’d stare at me in amazement. It’s hard to spend the day listening to the brutal details of some of these cases and then go home and cook dinner for the kids.

Don’t get me wrong. I loved what I did. There’s no job in the world more exciting and interesting than working homicides and criminal investigations. There’s a definite and unique sense of satisfaction that comes at the end of the process when you nail the bad guy. And there’s nothing like doing trial work. It’s an amazing feeling when you’re in the courtroom. You’re there before the judge and jury, all eyes are on you, and you’re telling the story of a crime through witnesses and pictures and hopefully you get the right result in the end. It’s a great rush.

To what extent did you draw on yourself to create C. J.?
When I sat down to write the C. J. character I drew a lot of her attributes from me. She’s very personal that way. The apartment she lived in at the beginning of the story, on Rocky Hill Road, is the apartment my husband and I lived in when we first got married and I was attending St. John’s as a law student. Her family nickname, “beany,” is the nickname my dad gave me when I was a kid. Maybe the reason C. J. appears so real is that part of her is a real person. And of course the other characters in the story are combinations of all the agents, cops, judges, and prosecutors I used to work with.

Is this an autobiographical story in terms of what happened to C. J.?
It is not. I was never raped. But as a woman, and as someone who has dealt with countless rape victims over the years, I have a clear sense of what rape might feel like, not just physically but also emotionally. I know what the terror would be like and what it would mean to have to live with it every day. It’s not something you ever get over. I don’t want to sound like I’m on a NOW soapbox here, and I’m not saying a man couldn’t have written this story, but I think it’s fair to say only a woman can ever truly understand the violation of rape.

How difficult was the decision to leave the security of your job in exchange for an uncertain future as a writer?
I had this plot in my head. I kept saying to my husband I want to write a screenplay or a book. He said you have a dream; you’ve got to pursue it. With two kids, a husband, and my responsibilities for FDLE-which often meant being called away at all hours of the day or night-it was hard finding the time to write. If I wanted to pursue my dream, I had to quit. The decision was difficult only because I loved the job so much. The salary I was making wasn’t so high, and since my husband was making enough to support the family, I was lucky enough to be able to forego it.

In Retribution you describe C.J. as someone who does her job, not for the publicity or the limelight, but for the victims. Is that how you felt as a prosecutor?
Yes. I was probably a little harder-edged than some of my colleagues. As a matter of fact, we used to have this cranky judge who’s a little like Judge Katz in the book. He would preside over First Appearance Hearings. (This is a pro-forma hearing in which a judge determines if there is enough probable cause for an arrest.) He was very liberal and had been on the bench for many years. Unless the accused was driving with a suspended license he’d basically let them go. When I’d put up an argument he’d say “You know, we can’t fry everybody.” To this day, when I walk into his courtroom he asks me, “Did you fry anybody yet?” I guess I was a bit more conservative than some of the other prosecutors, but I also felt bad for the victims.

One of the first stumbling blocks in C.J.’s case against the alleged serial killer in the story is an improper search conducted by a rookie cop without proper probable cause. There has long been a debate in this country about the rights of victims falling by the wayside in favor of protections afforded the accused. Where do you stand on the issue?
I don’t think we should strip defendants of all their rights. The constitution exists for a reason and it’s a great reason: there’s nothing worse than going to jail for a crime you didn’t commit. But at the same time, in our rush to vigorously protect defendants’ rights we have, in some instances, forgotten the rights of the victim. It’s only in the last few decades that victims have been given a right to be heard during sentencing. There was a time, not too long ago, when judges didn’t have to listen at all to what victims had to say. Well, all you have to do is go to a sentencing hearing where the victim’s mother stands up and tells the courtroom about her murdered son or raped daughter and you’ll think twice about the rights of defendants.

I believe the system works most of the time. Stops or searches are suppressed because of bad police work. When that happens it happens for the right reasons. In Retribution the prosecutor is faced with exactly this situation and has to decide how to handle it. The question is: what is the right or wrong thing to do? The line is sometimes blurred. Was justice done? And what does justice actually mean? How do you define it?

Why did you choose to specialize in domestic violence cases as a prosecutor?
I guess I liked being the underdog. Most of my colleagues hated domestic violence cases because, more often than not, the victims were uncooperative. They didn’t want you to prosecute. I never let that stop me. I loved the challenge of proving the case and seeing justice done even if the victim was lying about what had happened. More important, somebody had to do something to stop the cycle of violence. The victims of today become the defendants of tomorrow. I once had a case involving an eight-year-old boy who pulled his dad off his mom as his dad pummeled her in the face, breaking her nose for the fifth time. You just knew that boy would be doing the same thing to his spouse or girlfriend fifteen years down the road unless someone stepped in. That’s how he was learning to deal with his anger.

Then there was the case involving a woman whose boyfriend repeatedly burned her with an iron all over her body. The “crime scene” photos from that case are still used today to illustrate domestic violence at all of Florida’s police academies. You could see the iron indentations in her flesh. He then sent her out to prostitute herself. And when she didn’t make any money because of the burn marks, he burned her again. I asked her why she didn’t walk away. She was smart; she had a college degree. And she couldn’t answer me. He got 278 years in state prison. That sort of monster has to be taken off the streets.

You say that experience helped you to truly understand the fine line between love and hate and just how much damage can be wielded when one chooses to cross that line. What do you mean by that?
This guy with the iron claimed he loved her. In domestic violence cases where that line is crossed, the result always seems to be particularly brutal and barbaric. It’s almost as if the spouse or boyfriend has something to prove by how savage they can be. So-called “stranger cases”-in which a person is attacked by an unknown assailant-are in some respects much easier to deal with (and much easier to understand) than DV cases.

Do you miss the law?
I do. But I try to keep my hand in as much as possible. Not too long ago I went on a “ride along” with Miami Beach police and, the day before that, attended an autopsy at the medical examiner’s office. I also have lunch on a regular basis with all my prosecutor friends. I want everything I write to be current and up to date. However, I do miss the action. If this whole writing thing doesn’t work out that’s what I’ll go back and do.

You’ve described your main character as both a heroine and an anti-heroine. What do you mean by that?
C.J. has to make very difficult choices that are not always legal. She has to make those choices and still like herself and that’s very hard for her. As the writer, my goal was not just to have her like herself but also to make sure the readers liked her. It was a difficult line to straddle but it’s also what makes her human. If she made the easy choices all the time we’d have a different ending to this book. How a character faces and resolves conflict is what makes their story worth telling.

What do you want readers to get out of this novel?
I want them to have a good time. I also hope they’ll have more than a few sleepless nights. And when it’s all done-after they’re scared and it’s all over-I want them to think about whether or not justice was achieved. At the very least I hope this story will make them go back and reassess their thoughts about what justice is.