Michael Harvey should be read by all.

When you work at street level you never know who's going to walk through your door.

The two mistakes that come to mind are people who introduce a flood of characters in the first few pages. Where the reader has to stop and get out a flow chart and has to figure out who is who. And you just can't do that - introduce the first four generations of a character's family in the first chapter. You can introduce four or five characters at the most in the first chapter. Another mistake is to use big words that are not normally used in conversation to try to impress folks with your vocabulary.

Nobody wants to read about the honest lawyer down the street who does real estate loans and wills. If you want to sell books, you have to write about the interesting lawyers - the guys who steal all the money and take off. That's the fun stuff.

I've written 17 novels, and I've found out that fiction can't keep up with real life.

There are few things in life worse than a long-winded lawyer.

It's a game. We tax lawyers teach the rich how to play it so they can stay rich-and the IRS keeps changing the rules so we can keep getting rich teaching them.