by Robyn Gigl

A few weeks ago, my fourth novel in the Erin McCabe series, Nothing But The Truth, was published. I say with little fear of contradiction, Erin is a unique protagonist. She is a thirty something criminal defense attorney, who happens to be a transgender woman. Before you ask, “Wow, how did you come up with that idea?” you should know that before I became an author, I had practiced law for over forty years, much of doing criminal defense, and I also happen to be a transgender woman. I always hasten to add that Erin is not me. Erin is a young, attractive and fearless woman—I’m not. But while Erin McCabe may not be me, she does reflect many of the values and attitudes I hold dear. It’s also not a secret that in developing her as a character, I drew on some of my own experiences, both as an attorney and as a transgender woman.

Looking back, I certainly hadn’t set out to write a series. In 2018, just being published was an ambitious dream. But given my interesting perspective on life and the practice of law, when I started writing my debut novel, By Way of Sorrow, I decided that I wanted my book to both entertain and educate. In order to do that, I understood that I had to write a legal thriller that fans of Scott Turow, Lisa Scottoline or John Grisham would enjoy—I had to give the reader what they wanted—the spoonful of sugar. And then quietly, perhaps a bit subversively, I wanted to weave in the education piece so it fit seamlessly into the fabric of the story (the medicine).

To understand why it was important for me to include the education piece, you need to see the writing world through my perspective. I understood that, if I could get published, like my protagonist, I occupied a unique position. There were very few transgender authors writing in the crime genre, and to the best of my knowledge, there were no other protagonists who were transgender lawyers. All my life, what I saw in fiction, and particularly in the mystery/crime genre, was that LGBTQ+ people, and specifically trans people, were rarely represented and, when they were, they were marginalized and/or utilized as nothing more than a prop, a victim, or worse, the demented serial killer. With Erin, I saw the opportunity to normalize trans people, because we are normal, despite rarely being portrayed that way. And while I believed it was critically important for transgender people to see a positive representation of themselves, I felt it was even more important for cisgender (not transgender) individuals to get an accurate representation of who trans people are rather than an image distorted by the media or politicians. Thus, my goal was to engage all readers who enjoy the crime/mystery/thriller genre, regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity, while at the same time educating those readers who weren’t transgender, on some of the issues transgender people have to deal with on a daily basis.

There are other social issues that I’ve attempted to tackle in the series—the imperfections in the criminal justice system; how money and power can sometimes influence the outcome of a case; and how the system can be stacked against a defendant simply because of the person’s race, ethnicity, or their economic status. And while all of those issues are critically important, unlike the transgender issues, I am not alone in addressing those disparities. On the transgender issues, my hope—my dream—is that after reading one of my novels, a person will go away with a better understanding of what it means to be transgender and the issues trans folks face. If that happens, I will feel I’ve accomplished what I set out to do—entertain and educate.

A final postscript. How did it happen that, from those tentative first steps, the Erin McCabe books became a series? The simple answer is that when Kensington Publishing acquired my debut novel, By Way of Sorrow, in December 2018, the Deal Memo was for two books. When I said to my agent, “But I only have one book,” she replied, “You’ll write a second.” And with her bold prediction and Kensington’s faith in Erin McCabe (and perhaps in the author, too), a series was born.

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Robyn Gigl is an author, attorney and advocate. TIME Magazine selected her novel, SURVIVOR’S GUILT, as one of the 100 best Mystery and Thriller books of All Time. Her first novel, BY WAY OF SORROW, was called “quietly groundbreaking” by the NY Times and named one of the best crime novels of 2021 by CrimeReads. SURVIVOR’S GUILT was also named one of the best crime novels of 2022 by the NY Times and won the Joseph Hansen Award for LGBTQ+ Crime Writing. Her fourth novel, NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH was published in June 2024.

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