'Neurotic November' is retired judge's latest mystery novel
Barbara Levenson defied naysayers, including her own mother, by becoming the first woman to hold public office—as a school board member—in her then-hometown of Columbus, Ohio, in the 1960s; returning to college in the 1970s, after she moved with her family to Florida; and, once she earned her law degree at the University of Miami and had experience in practice, running for a circuit court seat against the incumbent judge in 1992. (Levenson won.)
Now, with 10 years on the bench and another five filling in as a senior judge following her retirement behind her, Levenson, 78, has just published her fourth mystery novel. A former prosecutor, under Dade County’s then-state attorney, Janet Reno, and criminal defense lawyer, Levenson modeled her lead character, Miami criminal defense attorney Mary Magruder Katz, on all the women attorneys she has met, the Miami Herald (sub. req.) reports.
Her latest book, Neurotic November, is described in Amazon reviews as a well-characterized mystery without graphic violence that interweaves legal developments in multiple cases with progress in the main character’s personal life (it involves a real estate developer the Herald calls “a hot Latin lover”).
One reviewer, however, recommends reading the other novels first. They are described on Levenson’s website.
“I try to have three or four cases going on at the same time for her,” Levenson says of her lead character. “It’s like that in real life.”
Levenson took college courses and workshops about writing before starting work as an author, at first on short stories and then longer fictional pieces.
“I’ve never had writer’s block,” she tells the Herald. “I just write, and if something is bad, I tear it up. You can always start over again.”
