Professor Lawrence Friedman is featured in the Palo Alto Weekly article for his writing life outside the law school. 

Frank May is a soft-spoken, congenial lawyer — and the protagonist in half a dozen books in “The Frank May Chronicles” mystery series. He's 44, married and has two teenaged daughters.

Lawrence Friedman is a soft-spoken, congenial Stanford University law professor — and the author of the chronicles, along with more than 30 academic books, plus law-review articles and talks. He's 83, married and has two grown-up daughters.

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“If I spend just a bit of time, but on a regular basis, it adds up. … It isn't my day job. I have fun. It's not a source of tension or grief; it's a source of pleasure,” Friedman said in his home.

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Friedman said he knows at least five other law professors who write mysteries, pointing to fellow Stanford law professor Paul Goldstein, author of several award-winning thrillers.

“Law professors write, are concerned with the law, so it's not so strange to write mysteries,” he said.

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Friedman, who has written about the history of mysteries, said his books “are not in the mainstream. … Today, most successful writers, like Scott Turow, write about courtroom drama, with a lot of sex and violence. It's not me.”

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“My style has changed, and there are aspects of the plot that I want to change,” he said.

Friedman said he wants his books to reflect real life; that's why he made May middle-aged, married with two kids. He was also careful to make his wife a sympathetic character, although more sensible than May.

“Subsidiary characters have affairs, divorces — Frank cannot,” he added.

Friedman said he likes to write about what he knows — and that includes a lot of older characters. And he allows May to not be all-knowing, often having him say, “I don't know about that, I'll have to look it up.”

His first-person mysteries are conversational in tone, with the dialogue ringing true. He said his role models are 19th-century writers Anthony Trollope and Jane Austen: “She's marvelous. Every sentence is perfect.”

His next book, “Who Killed Maggie Swift?,” will be released in a couple of months. All of his Quid Pro novels are available on Amazon.com.

==”Death of a One-Sided Man” by Lawrence Friedman; Quid Pro Books, New Orleans; 2013; 191 pages; $15.99==

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