I never did publish those early novels. They received the usual ecstatic rejection letters and were put away where, perhaps, most first novels belong, in that box at the back of the closet. But I didn't stop writing, either. Instead, I did something that, even seven years later, still surprises me. I wrote a thriller. About a lawyer. Who investigates a seemingly random act of violence. And stumbles, gradually, upon a vast conspiracy. Which leads to revelations, twists and ultimately resolutions.

In other words, it had a plot.

Now, I worked hard on the writing in that novel, it's true, but the plot was the unchallenged star of the piece, and when the book, "A Jury of Her Peers," was published in 1996, reviewers did not dwell on my deathless prose.

You'd think that, somewhere along the line of this career readjustment, I would have stuck my head in the ground for shame and perhaps left it there, but a funny thing happened to me in the course of plotting my thriller.

I discovered that I liked it.

Like a classical music snob with a secret Barry Manilow stash, I liked it.

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