Attorney/Author Steve Epstein Publishes Fourth True Crime Book
“By the time you read this, Steve Epstein may be famous. His first book, ‘Murder on Birchleaf Drive: The True Story of the Michelle Young Murder Case,’ is that good.”
Six years and one global pandemic later, the preceding prediction, gleaned from the August 2019 edition of North Carolina Lawyer, has proven true.
Steve Epstein, the attorney, remains in full-time practice with Poyner Spruill LLP in Raleigh, where he is a partner and N.C. State Bar Board-Certified Specialist in Family Law.
Steven B. Epstein, as legions of true crime readers worldwide know him, recently published his fourth book and is well on his way with book number five. In addition to the aforementioned debut, Epstein has written and Black Lyon Publishing has published “Evil at Lake Seminole” (2020), “Extreme Punishment” (2022), and “Deadly Heist” (2025).
All of which brings us to the first question from a recent interview, in which the author was asked if he had any idea his second career as an author would prove so successful.
“Absolutely not,” Epstein responded without hesitation. “The whole thing was just a midlife crisis that has taken a very strange and bizarre turn into the world of publishing that I thought would be a ‘one-and-done.’ I didn’t expect to publish anything and I didn’t expect to do more than one, but people have pushed me and prodded me to keep writing.
“The more I’ve done that, the more I’ve enjoyed it. And now I think I have found something that I enjoy every bit as much as the practice of law – something that I can continue doing well into my retirement.”
Which, by the way, is not coming anytime soon. But as long as he enjoys the additional workload, Epstein will never run out of true crime stories to develop into books.
“It is a lot less stressful to work on writing a book,” Epstein interjected, “than it is to work on representing people who are going through a divorce.”
“Murder on Birchleaf Drive” is the only local story that Epstein has developed and the only one generated through court transcripts and recordings.
“My first book, I didn’t have people who were willing to interview with me,” Epstein explained. “That was partly because of the raw nature of all of their emotions, from how horrific that crime was to the recency of it. That has not been true for my subsequent books.”
Which suits Epstein just fine.
“Being able to interview many of the people who were associated with the crime, you get so much more rich detail and you can paint more of the characters, personalities and all of that. So the first book is the only book where it was pretty much just the court records that allowed me to tell the story. Since then, my books have benefited from lots and lots of interviews of the people involved.
“The fourth book that I wrote, one difference was it was written about a crime that occurred in 1991. So several of those people were dead, but I was able to talk to the living lawyers. I was able to talk to a living relative of the person who is charged with the crime and a living relative of two of the victims. There I had to rely on the video – Court TV video of the trial – because there were no written transcripts of the trial. That video was enormously helpful.”
Video, Epstein continued, has been an invaluable resource with his other books as well.
“I’ve had video of trials in my first four books, and even in the Jason Young case (first book) where I didn’t get to talk to any of the people involved, I was able to see them on video and hear their stories during their testimony. That was all wonderful. The current book that I’m writing is the very first one where the judge prohibited cameras in the courtroom.
“I’m able to tell the story from all of the recountings that I’m getting of all of the different people involved and a written transcript, but a written transcript doesn’t give you nearly as much of the way a person carries themselves. You don’t pick up on that from a written transcript. So I’ve had a combination of all of those things in all of the books that I’ve written. You work with what’s available to you.”
Including his experience as a lawyer.
“The stakes for the people I’m talking to aren’t very high, because they’re not about to participate in some courtroom proceeding. It is a non-threatening environment. It’s not in a conference room. But the way I ask questions and follow up is very similar to taking a deposition. Those skills serve me well in talking to all the people that I interview. But also it’s gaining a sense, which I have over four books now, of what readers will find interesting.
“You can get lost in the details in all of these cases, and those details may or may not be compelling, interesting, or entertaining to your readers. It’s almost like a director directing a movie. The director’s job is to keep the flow going, to keep those viewing the movie on the edge of their seat, and not to bore them with details that they’ll find uninteresting that will depart from the arc of the story.
“I have to do the same thing even as I’m gathering the information, and I still gather a ton of information. But a whole lot of it’s going to be left on the cutting room floor.”
Evidently, Epstein has been successful in deciding what his readers will find interesting.
“The best that I can do to get a sense of that are the Amazon reviews, the Goodreads reviews, and the people who reach out to me on my author website. The contact information is there, and people reach out to me all the time. I’ve had people reach out to me from Australia, from England, so I’ve got people reading books all over the world. And that’s the sense that I have of what my following is.
“When people post their reviews or reach out to me directly, yes, there tends to be more of an interest in the location where the crime occurred and where those people are familiar with the story. But there’s a whole true crime universe out there that defies borders. They watch “Dateline” and they listen to podcasts and they read books, and when they hear about a story that they think might interest them, they read it. That doesn’t mean that it’s going to be somebody that’s local to where the crime occurred. It could be somebody from another country in another part of the world.”
Author’s website now promotes four published books.
Which is, in a word, awesome.
“Yeah, it’s really cool when I read a review on Amazon and see what people have said. They’re entitled to their opinion, but when people say, ’He’s the best true crime writer since Ann Rule’ and stuff like that, it is really cool that at least one person has read my book and come to that conclusion.
“Obviously there are others who come to different conclusions, but if I spend a couple thousand hours writing a book and have at least one person walk away with the conclusion that I’ve written a good book, that is pretty cool.”
Contrary to what one might think, the isolation and solitude of the pandemic did not lend itself to writing or selling books.
“I finished my second book (“Evil at Lake Seminole”) and it came out in June of 2020, so it actually was sort of the other way around,” Epstein explained. “Nobody knew what to do with books during that period of time, so I didn’t get to do book events. Bookstores were closed. It wasn’t even that I had the opportunity.
“Bookstores and libraries were closed, and people weren’t doing book clubs. So I would say the opposite is true – that the pandemic didn’t give me the same satisfactory response I had with my first book, where I got to do book signings and probably 20 book events in all kinds of places, including in New York.”
But Epstein didn’t let it slow him down.
“I knew I wanted to keep writing, and I wrote a third book where the story was developing slowly because of the pandemic. That was ’Extreme Punishment,’ which was about this law professor in Florida who was murdered. That story developed really, really slowly. I actually had to take a pause in the writing while the next trial finally was going to get scheduled through all of the delays from the pandemic.
“If anything, I would say the pandemic slowed down my writing. It didn’t speed it up and it didn’t make me more interested because it was just this weird time when people weren’t sure of how to go about buying books, reading books, or going to book events. Now it’s back to the way it was when I started writing. I can put a book out and immediately start going to events and being on podcasts and things like that.”
How many events have you done?
“Through all of these years, if you include with live people, probably 30 or 40. I’ve been on ‘Dateline,’ I’ve done four different TV shows, and I’ve done about 15 to 20 different podcasts. I’ve done YouTube, live streams, I’ve done talk radio in England; obviously I wasn’t interviewed live in England, but I was talking to people in England. If you include all of those things, I’ve done over 100 events over all these years.
“I love it! I enjoy doing it with a live audience more than I do just to interview for a podcast or a YouTube live stream, or even ’Dateline‘ or other TV shows. But I love all of that. The live audience is the best because people have read my books and they’re asking me questions about it, and that’s fun. When they’ve thought about it and they’re bouncing questions back to me that I haven’t thought of, that’s really cool.”
Is the next book always percolating in the background as you’re finishing your current project?
“The way it works is that once I have finished the book, I want to take a deep breath. But it’s only so long before I get antsy and I’m like, ‘OK, I need to find my next story.’ And then I then I go to ’Dateline,’ I go to YouTube, I go to podcasts, and I try to find something that really sparks my interest. Typically I have two or three stories that I play around with.
“There may be something that just doesn’t seem right about this, or I don’t think I want to do this, and then I find the next one. And there’s something about the next one that I fall in love with, and then I get to start interviewing people, and I’m off to the races.”
Once Epstein lands on the right story, that’s it.
“I am not interested in any other story,” he concluded. “You can’t talk to me about another story, because now I’m going to continue going until this is in a published book a year and a half later. Whatever it is. Then I’m going take a deep breath and I’m going to start looking at new story ideas and then I’ll play around with the couple before I find the right one. And repeat the same pattern.
“Lather, rinse, repeat.”
A native of Long Island, New York, Epstein is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1987) and UNC School of Law (1990). He and his wife, Aletia Ferreira, love their blended family of five children and their recently attained status as empty nesters. Learn more about the attorney on the Poyner Spruill website and learn more about the author on the Steven B. Epstein True Crime Writer website.
PS: His books really are that good.
Russell Rawlings is director of external affairs and communications for the North Carolina Bar Association.