Oddly enough, Mike Lupica and James Patterson, two renowned and prolific writers, had never met before they began the first of six novels they have written together since 2022.
Mr. Lupica said they’re not sure whose friends set up their first meeting, but he remembers it was at a bar. “We’re not particularly proud of that bar,” he said during a Zoom chat with Mr. Patterson.
“I’m proud of it,” Mr. Patterson said.
“Jimmy Breslin always said that the test of a really good idea is if it lasts through a hangover, and somehow when Jim woke up the next morning he still wanted to work with me. So here we are.”
The occasion for the conversation was the launch of “The Hamptons Lawyer,” the third in a trilogy featuring Jane Smith, which will be published on Monday by Little, Brown and Company. Ms. Smith is a criminal defense attorney based, well, you know where.
Their collaboration began with “The Horsewoman,” which follows the complicated relationship between a mother and a daughter, both champion riders, as they face off in the Paris Olympics.
Mr. Patterson said when they first got together they were thinking of doing a children’s book, but when the subject shifted from baseball to the world of competitive riding, they decided on an adult book instead.
“My daughter was a champion show-jumper,” said Mr. Lupica. “She grew up riding in the Hampton Classic. So I was well versed in that world.”
Of their collaboration, Mr. Lupica said it felt completely seamless from the beginning. “Jim has an ability to see. Like athletes who can see the whole field, Jim can see a book. He is a bear for outlines, and the outlines are sometimes like screenplays, literally scene by scene. What you’re seeing today is what we do. We talk way too much every day. Jim says it’s like we have our own writers’ room, except it’s on the phone.”
Mr. Patterson’s response, not the only non sequitur in the conversation, was “I have only one word for you about lunch: Carvel.”
But he then turned his attention to “The Hamptons Lawyer.” “I think one of the keys to the book, especially for people on the East End, but I think in general, people really enjoy reading a book when
they’re familiar with a lot of the places and the restaurants and the streets. Especially when they like the story.” Mr. Patterson has set other books in the Hamptons, among them “The Murder House,” “The Summer House,” and “Beach Road.”
He added that people like books about lawyers and courtrooms, and Mr. Lupica said, “Of the three books in the trilogy, this is the most courtroom-y. We see her with the guns and this and that, but this one is a cool trial.”
“I told John Grisham about this,” Mr. Patterson said. “Watch out, Grisham, we’re coming after you in the courtroom.” He went on to say that Jane Smith is his favorite character of all time.
“Before we even knew what ‘12 Months to Live,’ the first book in the trilogy, would be about, we started talking about her. We decided she was a college hockey player, which is kind of interesting.”
“Jim’s right,” Mr. Lupica said. “It informs who she is. Our line about Jane is, when she goes into the corner, she will come out with the puck.”
Of all the facts that emerged about Jane, one of the most important is that she has a terminal cancer diagnosis. In addition, she has never lost a case, she grew up on Long Island without a lot of money, has resettled there with a lot of money. “As the pieces come together,” said Mr. Patterson, “suddenly you’re wanting to write the book.”
Mr. Lupica added that Jane went to Boston College. “This is one thing we argued about,” Mr. Patterson said, “because I didn’t want her to go there. Mike went there, all of his children went there, and he gets a certain amount of money when he writes about . . .”
“No, no, no,” Mr. Lupica interrupted, then pointed out that it wasn’t necessary to read the first two in the trilogy, “Hard to Kill” being the second, in order to appreciate “The Hamptons Lawyer” as a stand-alone book.
Mr. Patterson added, “We have to say that as Long Island books go, this one is a little better than ‘Gatsby.’ A little more important. I don’t know, I’m just saying.”
While Mr. Lupica’s house here is in East Hampton, “though we’re more Amagansett than East Hampton,” Mr. Patterson has never had a house here.
“I was in houses with other people,” he said.
“Were you invited into those houses or did you just drop in?”
He has been invited, not just to visit friends but to appear at programs such as Fridays at Five, which brings important authors to the Hampton Library in Bridgehampton, and Authors Night in East Hampton.
“For me, the geography I was able to bring to this collaboration was really fun,” Mr. Lupica said.
“That’s basically what Mike did, the places. That’s about it. I didn’t know the roads and stuff. I’d say, what’s the road I wrote this chapter about?”
“The thing about Jane that drew us once Jim imagined the idea of a woman who is basically trying to keep a guy out of jail while she’s kind of been jailed by a cancer diagnosis is, anybody who reads this book, especially out here, will see it’s a love letter to this part of the world. So much takes place at the beaches, in Sag Harbor, in Amagansett, in East Hampton, at my buddy Gus’s place, the Candy Kitchen in Bridgehampton. But this woman . . .”
“He does, he gets a lot of free lunches and dinners from this book.”
“Remember something about Mr. Patterson, he makes stuff up for a living. We take great pride in our female characters. Jane is a woman who’s tough and smart and funny, and you want to have a beer with her. We hope that by the end of the book you’ll want to stand up and cheer.”
“We’re both under the thumbs of our wives,” said Mr. Patterson. “They read these books before we’re allowed to send them out. For real, tragically.”
“If we don’t write good women, and I speak for Jim, our lives at home become extremely difficult. We have the same position on our wives. If they ever leave us, we’re going with them.”
Asked whether Jane will outlast the 12 to 14 months of her diagnosis, they were a little cagey. “There’s a really big chance she’ll outlive Mike and me,” Mr. Patterson said. “And there’s always room for prequels.”
Mr. Patterson grew up in Newburgh and Mr. Lupica grew up in Oneida, “so we’re a couple of upstate boys. It’s amazing that we never got together, that it took being in a gin mill to do it,” said Mr. Lupica. “We love doing this, we really like working together.”
And trading the occasional insult just to keep it interesting.
