A work of passion

After award-winning author and Hoover resident Debra Goldstein published her first novel, “Maze in Blue,” about seven years ago, she tried to keep her career as a mystery novel writer separate from her 23-year career as a Birmingham judge. 

Not only did she make sure she never used any subject material from her legal background — which is a rule she keeps to this day — she also kept talk about her writing to a minimum. Yet, she said, things don’t always go as planned. 

“I used to end every hearing by looking up over my glasses while I was sitting up in that black robe and say, ‘Is there anything further?’ and the lawyers would go, ‘No, your honor,’ and I would do a standard closing,” she said. 

On one particular case, after the lawyer replied with, “No, your honor,” his client added, “there’s one more thing,” much to the lawyer’s dismay — he threw his hands up in the air, Goldstein remembered.

“[The client] said, ‘Your honor, I just want you to know no matter how you rule, I’m going to buy your book.’ I had to keep a straight face,” Goldstein chuckled, adding she’s sure he didn’t buy her book because she ruled against him.

That was the night she told her husband they needed to “run the numbers” to see if she could leave her lifetime appointment on the bench, as a federal administrative law judge for the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, and afford to follow her passion and transition to a full-time writer. 

At this point, Goldstein only had time to write very early in the morning, but still she’d managed to publish her first book and was frantically writing more for her second book, “Should Have Played Poker.” She knew she needed more time to pursue it. The very next day, she announced in the courtroom she would be gone after she finished her docket. 

“The guys looked at me, and they thought I was insane. I got on the bench very early so I was just reaching the average age of that judgeship,” she said. “… I knew that if I could stay healthy for 20 or 30 years, I could have a whole other career [in writing] and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last five years. It’s very different, but I haven’t looked back. I am having a ball; it’s like having a second childhood.”

“One Taste Too Many,” which released at the start of the year, is Goldstein’s first “cozy mystery,” though her other mysteries have cozy qualities. Even still, some of her readers are calling her three-part series debut “an edgier” addition to the genre. 

Typically, a cozy mystery involves clean language, characters who are excellent cooks or craftspeople, a small-town or closed setting and mysteries that leave the gore, blood or murder off the page, Goldstein said, unlike thrillers. 

Her book, published by Kensington Publishing Corp., a distributer through Penguin Random House, features a character Goldstein said is more like her and unlike those usually featured in cozies: a culinary-challenged woman, Sarah Blair. Goldstein said she knew there had to be other people out there who enjoyed the cozy concept and still related to an out-of-the-norm character. 

“The protagonist, Sarah Blair, in this story is literally a cook of convenience. She likes to bring take-out in, she makes things that are not from scratch. She’s always using prepared items, like one of the recipes is pie with Stouffer’s spinach soufflé, and when it comes to crafts and things, she’s a klutz, which I am, too,” she said

Blair, who married at age 18 and was divorced by 28, is in the process of starting her life over again when it becomes more complicated by the death of her ex-husband and the accusation that the killer was her twin sister, who is “perfect in every way and also a great chef.”

“The plot begins when Sarah’s ex-husband is found dead, and then everybody thinks he’s been poisoned by the twin sister’s award-winning rhubarb crisp,” Goldstein said. 

The book centers in on Blair trying to figure out who killed her ex-husband, so she doesn’t have to take her sister’s place in a cooking competition. 

Goldstein started her career in legal work, where she finished law school after college and worked as a Birmingham-based lawyer and then a judge. Often, she had to travel for the job and whenever she did, she read mysteries and biographies, which she found relaxing. 

“Because my workload was heavy and serious, cozy mysteries and light mysteries were a mind break, and I loved solving the mystery — literally solving the puzzle of the mysteries. So, if I was going to write, I was going to write those,” she said.

Being a judge for 23 years helped her to better understand people, she said, and how “everyone has their own story, their own motivation.”

“There’s truth in everything. People will tell you a story, tell you facts, but they aren’t always directive. They aren’t always as truthful as we would perceive the truth to be, but you have to listen to them,” Goldstein said. 

Now that she’s transitioned to a writer and has published several books and short stories, she loves that she’s been able to meet and hang out with some of the authors she has been reading for years. So many of them, she said, are starting fresh and having a second career like her.

“None of us take it for granted. We are having a blast doing what we love. It’s a lot of work, but it’s also [a] work of passion,” she said. 

Much of the Sarah Blair story comes from elements of Goldstein’s life that don’t have to do with her judgeship, like her own sister, a talented cook, and her twin children. Recently, her sister even read “One Taste Too Many,” she said. 

“I think she thought that this was the craziest career [writing] that I could have possibly done. She was so used to me being the straight-laced lawyer and seeing these light-hearted books,” Goldstein laughed. “Even though my book is too light for her in many ways, she enjoys reading them. It’s like a secret pleasure.”

That was Goldstein’s biggest goal, she said: to make the books fun and enjoyable to read, to make them “a getaway” from all the tensions in life. 

“[The series] reads fast, and it keeps you interested in trying to figure out who did it. The reviews are saying that it’s not who they expect, but it makes perfect sense. … The last concept I bring in is social issues. People want to think about things, but they don’t want to be hit over the head. So if you bring in domestic violence or legal issues or animal issues, as long as you make them softer, people will actually sit there and end up thinking about them,” Goldstein said. 

Goldstein donated sale proceeds in February to YWCA’s domestic violence program. 

Her character, Sarah Blair, lives in a small, made-up town in Alabama, right outside of Birmingham. In the second and third book, they will venture into the city, she said, from which she took real elements and incorporated them into the mystery. 

The next book in the series should be released in October. 

Books are available locally and online. To learn more, go to debrahgoldstein.com.