ABOUT
REID WINSLOW
Reid Winslow spent a career watching people at their best and their worst inside real courtrooms. Now he channels it into legal thrillers where the procedure is authentic, the stakes are human, and the tension never feels invented.
Get to know Reid Winslow
Writer of legal and crime thrillers
Reid Winslow writes legal and crime thrillers shaped by a career spent inside real courtrooms, where the stakes are never abstract and human nature is always on display. Born on the East Coast and raised in Brooklyn before it was considered chic, he went on to law school. He then became an Assistant District Attorney in New York City, prosecuting cases in one of the toughest legal arenas in the country.
In the late 1980s, Winslow tried what was then considered one of the first cases of its kind, known at the time as “computer trespass.” The defendants accessed the state payroll computer and generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraudulent overtime.
After the conviction, the New York Daily News captured it with a headline that could have come from a thriller: “Doing Time for Overtime.” That early intersection of crime, motive, and emerging technology helped shape the lens he brings to fiction: the way opportunity, pressure, and rationalization can turn ordinary people into defendants, victims, or worse.
Seeking a change of scenery, Winslow moved to the Pacific Northwest, where he built a distinguished career as a trial lawyer over more than three decades. Along the way, he became an acute observer of the human condition. He encountering people at their best and their worst: ambition, desperation, courage, and moral failure.
Blending intrigue and legal tension
Those lived details are the foundation of his novels, which blend criminal intrigue, legal tension, and psychological suspense with the momentum of a page-turner.
Winslow also worked in FM radio and hosted LawTalk, a call-in show that demystified the legal system for everyday listeners by dissecting real cases and answering the questions most people are afraid to ask their own attorneys. That same plain-spoken clarity shows up on the page: tight scenes, credible procedures, and characters forced into high-stakes choices.
His debut novel, The Dead Bell, was selected by Kirkus Reviews as one of the 1,000 best independent books of 2022, which praised it as “a fabulous, well-researched whodunit.” Bestselling author Phil Margolin called it “This excellent debut [that] does not disappoint.” His second novel, Risk Management, continues his signature blend of legal pressure, criminal consequences, and psychological depth. A third novel, The Twig Is Bent, is currently in progress.
Winslow is an advocate for the autism community and for literacy. He lives in the Inland Northwest with his wife and their two cats, Boris and Natasha. As for lawyer jokes, he doesn’t find them funny: the next time someone gets arrested, they should call a lawyer, not a comedian.
Interview with Reid Winslow
Author Reid Winslow, a pen name for a retired trial lawyer with 34 years of experience, discusses his transition to full-time thriller writing. His two novels, The Dead Bell and Risk Management, are set in Lake County, Illinois, and draw on his legal career’s insights into human nature, morality, and the circumstances that drive people toward wrong doing.
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Reid Winslow
