One rainy night in New York City, outstanding law student Chloe Larson wakes from a terrible nightmare. But it's not a nightmare - it's real. Not only is she savagely violated in her own bedroom, Chloe then has to deal with the horror of nobody being brought to justice.

Twelve years later a very different Chloe is forging a formidable reputation in the Miami Dade State Attorney's Office, as a vicious serial killer nicknamed Cupid terrorises Florida - tearing out his tortured victim's hearts while they're still conscious.

When the police stop a driver on the McArthur Causeway and a mutilated corpse is found in his trunk, it seems the hunt for Cupid is finally over. But as Chloe begins the task of prosecuting the suspect, she soon realises that this case will be anything but easy. Because her past is about to force itself on her present - and the terror is only just beginning.

Sometimes there's a price to be paid for justice. And sometimes that price is awful. Revenge could cost Chloe her sanity. The truth could cost her her life.

THE PAST. THE PRESENT. THE TERROR.

THE CLOWN WATCHED with wide eyes through parted branches as her luscious legs stepped out of the BMW. Long and tan, probably from some high-priced tanning salon. She was wearing a short and tight, oh-so tight, black skirt and a pink silk camisole which showed off her full, perky breasts. Over her arm she carried a matching black suit jacket. Pink was her favorite color—and his too—and he was glad she had chosen to wear it tonight. Mmmm hmmm . . . pretty in pink! A slow smile spread over his face and he began to think that perhaps tonight—well, tonight might not be so bad after all. In fact, things were starting to shape up quite nicely. He put his hand over his mouth to suppress an escaping giggle.

Her long blond hair met the small of her back in a cascade of tender curls and he could smell her sweet, sexy perfume, heavy in the humid air. He recognized it immediately as her favourite—Chanel No. Five. The perspiration rushed down from the nape of his neck, soaking his back and armpits.

She seemed to go on forever talking with that preppie little prick of a boyfriend. She didn’t look happy. Blah, blah, blah . . . Didn’t they know what time it was? It was time to go home. Time to go to bed. His fingers drummed impatiently against the black nylon bag. His bag of tricks.

She slammed her door. He, in turn, suddenly got out of the car and slammed his. Down the street a dog began to bark. The Clown’s knees quivered slightly. What if a nosy neighbor woke up?

But no neighbors came out to play, and Preppie walked fast to meet her on the sidewalk. He grabbed her hand and they exchanged words that he could not hear. Then he kissed her full on the lips. Hand in hand they walked to the front door of the complex. Her high heels clicked on the cement walk, so close he could practically reach out and touch her ankle. Again, he began to panic. Was the boyfriend going in, too? That would just ruin everything. Preppie had had his fun with her last night—tonight was his turn.

On the stoop of the foyer they kissed again, but then she slipped in the main door of the complex alone. Not so lucky tonight, are we, Preppie? The Clown chuckled softly.

Preppie turned, his head down, and walked slowly back to his car, jingling the keys in his hand. Like a good little boyfriend, he waited until the light went on in the apartment and he saw her wave from the living room window before he drove off into the night.

The Clown smiled. How quaint! The Preppie Prick walks her to her door and kisses her good night. Don’t let those bedbugs bite! And he even stays around to make sure that she is safe and sound and that no bogeyman is lurking inside. What a laugh riot!

Five minutes later, the lights in her bedroom went on, illuminating the bushes. He pulled himself deeper into the hedge. The air conditioner rattled to life above him and condensation dripped through the evergreen onto his head. He saw her shadow bouncing about in the bushes as she walked around the room, and then she closed the blinds and the light grew dim.
He sat completely motionless for twenty minutes after all the lights went out. Thunder rumbled, louder this time. The rain had started. Soft at first, but he knew that would change. The wind gusts were strong now, and the bushes swayed back and forth, dancing a strange dance in the dim streetlight. The storm was almost upon them. She had made it just in the nick of time.
He grabbed his bag of tricks and snaked his way around the corner of the building until he was directly beneath the window with the broken latch in her living room. Then at precisely 1:32 a.m., the Clown pulled his mask on snug over his face. He stood and brushed off his now very tight blue jeans, silently lifted the darkened window and slithered inside out of the rain.

Find out how life as a prosecutor helped shape Jilliane Hoffman's debut thriller Retribution in our exclusive interview ...

How do you describe this story?
I describe it as a legal, psychological suspense thriller.  It’s a combination of the writing styles of three of my favorite authors: John Grisham, Thomas Harris, and James Patterson.  It has a little legal, a little police work, and a lot of suspense. 

Why did you choose Retribution as the title?
According to the Florida penal system, one of the purposes of prison sentencing is retribution.  And, of course, it’s also the ultimate goal of the prosecutor in the story.  So it seemed an apt title. 

Where did the idea for this story come from? 
I had thought of the premise of Retribution for years: what would happen if the persecuted-the victim-became the prosecutor?  Would justice always steer their actions, or would hatred?  Knowing that the criminal justice system is far from perfect, and the guilty do, in fact, walk away free on technicalities, I took that initial premise and began to wonder what a person would do when faced with that possibility, and would their choice for justice be any different if the crime were more heinous?  Would it be more acceptable?  

As an Assistant State Attorney in Miami, and later as an advisor to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, you were directly responsible for making justice happen.  And yet you say an arrest or conviction was all too often bittersweet.  Why? 
Because even if you get what you’re seeking-even if you put the person responsible for the crime in jail-you still have a victim who has to battle every day with the emotional and physical scars left by whatever was done to him or her.  The bad guy might be in jail but the victim still has to recover, and sometimes that never happens.  And that’s on a good day; that’s assuming you even get a conviction to begin with.  Sometimes juries will toss out the baby with the bathwater and you don’t get a full verdict on all counts, or, for reasons known only to them, they’ll let the criminal go.  Then you have to go back and explain to the victim that the system didn’t work.  They still have their scars, but now they also have the feeling there’s been no justice at all.

That must be one of the hardest things to do as a prosecutor.
There has always been a very high burnout rate among cops and prosecutors.  A lot of assistant state attorneys do their 3-year commitment and then leave for that very reason.  The way most veteran prosecutors overcome burnout is to focus on the good they’re doing for society.  They stay on the job in the hope that the justice they get for some victims will outweigh the injustice done to others who are let down by the system.  Still, it’s tough.  I’d go home sometimes and tell my husband about my day, or he’d see photographs from a case I’d been working on, and he’d stare at me in amazement.  It’s hard to spend the day listening to the brutal details of some of these cases and then go home and cook dinner for the kids. 

Don’t get me wrong.  I loved what I did.  There’s no job in the world more exciting and interesting than working homicides and criminal investigations.  There’s a definite and unique sense of satisfaction that comes at the end of the process when you nail the bad guy.  And there’s nothing like doing trial work.  It’s an amazing feeling when you’re in the courtroom.  You’re there before the judge and jury, all eyes are on you, and you’re telling the story of a crime through witnesses and pictures and hopefully you get the right result in the end.  It’s a great rush. 

To what extent did you draw on yourself to create C.J.? 
When I sat down to write the C.J. character I drew a lot of her attributes from me.  She’s very personal that way.  The apartment she lived in at the beginning of the story, on Rocky Hill Road, is the apartment my husband and I lived in when we first got married and I was attending St. John’s as a law student.  Her family nickname, “beany,” is the nickname my dad gave me when I was a kid.  Maybe the reason C.J. appears so real is that part of her is a real person.  And of course the other characters in the story are combinations of all the agents, cops, judges, and prosecutors I used to work with. 

Is this an autobiographical story in terms of what happened to C.J.?   
It is not.  I was never raped.  But as a woman, and as someone who has dealt with countless rape victims over the years, I have a clear sense of what rape might feel like, not just physically but also emotionally.  I know what the terror would be like and what it would mean to have to live with it every day.  It’s not something you ever get over.  I don’t want to sound like I’m on a NOW soapbox here, and I’m not saying a man couldn’t have written this story, but I think it’s fair to say only a woman can ever truly understand the violation of rape. 

How difficult was the decision to leave the security of your job in exchange for an uncertain future as a writer? 
I had this plot in my head.  I kept saying to my husband I want to write a screenplay or a book.  He said you have a dream; you’ve got to pursue it.  With two kids, a husband, and my responsibilities for FDLE-which often meant being called away at all hours of the day or night-it was hard finding the time to write.  If I wanted to pursue my dream, I had to quit.  The decision was difficult only because I loved the job so much.  The salary I was making wasn’t so high, and since my husband was making enough to support the family, I was lucky enough to be able to forego it. 

In Retribution you describe C.J. as someone who does her job, not for the publicity or the limelight, but for the victims.  Is that how you felt as a prosecutor?
Yes.  I was probably a little harder-edged than some of my colleagues.  As a matter of fact, we used to have this cranky judge who’s a little like Judge Katz in the book.  He would preside over First Appearance Hearings.  (This is a pro-forma hearing in which a judge determines if there is enough probable cause for an arrest.)  He was very liberal and had been on the bench for many years.  Unless the accused was driving with a suspended license he’d basically let them go.  When I’d put up an argument he’d say “You know, we can’t fry everybody.”  To this day, when I walk into his courtroom he asks me, “Did you fry anybody yet?”  I guess I was a bit more conservative than some of the other prosecutors, but I also felt bad for the victims. 

One of the first stumbling blocks in C.J.’s case against the alleged serial killer in the story is an improper search conducted by a rookie cop without proper probable cause.  There has long been a debate in this country about the rights of victims falling by the wayside in favor of protections afforded the accused.  Where do you stand on the issue?   
I don’t think we should strip defendants of all their rights.  The constitution exists for a reason and it’s a great reason: there’s nothing worse than going to jail for a crime you didn’t commit.  But at the same time, in our rush to vigorously protect defendants’ rights we have, in some instances, forgotten the rights of the victim.  It’s only in the last few decades that victims have been given a right to be heard during sentencing.  There was a time, not too long ago, when judges didn’t have to listen at all to what victims had to say.  Well, all you have to do is go to a sentencing hearing where the victim’s mother stands up and tells the courtroom about her murdered son or raped daughter and you’ll think twice about the rights of defendants.   

I believe the system works most of the time.  Stops or searches are suppressed because of bad police work.  When that happens it happens for the right reasons.  In Retribution the prosecutor is faced with exactly this situation and has to decide how to handle it.  The question is: what is the right or wrong thing to do?  The line is sometimes blurred.  Was justice done?  And what does justice actually mean?  How do you define it? 

Why did you choose to specialize in domestic violence cases as a prosecutor? 
I guess I liked being the underdog.  Most of my colleagues hated domestic violence cases because, more often than not, the victims were uncooperative.  They didn’t want you to prosecute.  I never let that stop me.  I loved the challenge of proving the case and seeing justice done even if the victim was lying about what had happened.  More important, somebody had to do something to stop the cycle of violence.  The victims of today become the defendants of tomorrow.  I once had a case involving an eight-year-old boy who pulled his dad off his mom as his dad pummeled her in the face, breaking her nose for the fifth time.  You just knew that boy would be doing the same thing to his spouse or girlfriend fifteen years down the road unless someone stepped in.  That’s how he was learning to deal with his anger.

Then there was the case involving a woman whose boyfriend repeatedly burned her with an iron all over her body.  The “crime scene” photos from that case are still used today to illustrate domestic violence at all of Florida’s police academies.  You could see the iron indentations in her flesh.  He then sent her out to prostitute herself.  And when she didn’t make any money because of the burn marks, he burned her again.  I asked her why she didn’t walk away.  She was smart; she had a college degree.  And she couldn’t answer me.  He got 278 years in state prison.  That sort of monster has to be taken off the streets.   

You say that experience helped you to truly understand the fine line between love and hate and just how much damage can be wielded when one chooses to cross that line.  What do you mean by that?
This guy with the iron claimed he loved her.  In domestic violence cases where that line is crossed, the result always seems to be particularly brutal and barbaric.  It’s almost as if the spouse or boyfriend has something to prove by how savage they can be.  So-called “stranger cases”-in which a person is attacked by an unknown assailant-are in some respects much easier to deal with (and much easier to understand) than DV cases.   

Do you miss the law? 
I do.  But I try to keep my hand in as much as possible.  Not too long ago I went on a “ride along” with Miami Beach police and, the day before that, attended an autopsy at the medical examiner’s office.  I also have lunch on a regular basis with all my prosecutor friends.  I want everything I write to be current and up to date.  However, I do miss the action.  If this whole writing thing doesn’t work out that’s what I’ll go back and do.    

You’ve described your main character as both a heroine and an anti-heroine.  What do you mean by that? 
C.J. has to make very difficult choices that are not always legal.  She has to make those choices and still like herself and that’s very hard for her.  As the writer, my goal was not just to have her like herself but also to make sure the readers liked her.  It was a difficult line to straddle but it’s also what makes her human.  If she made the easy choices all the time we’d have a different ending to this book.  How a character faces and resolves conflict is what makes their story worth telling. 

What do you want readers to get out of this novel?
I want them to have a good time.  I also hope they’ll have more than a few sleepless nights.  And when it’s all done-after they’re scared and it’s all over-I want them to think about whether or not justice was achieved.  At the very least I hope this story will make them go back and reassess their thoughts about what justice is.

With pace to leave Grisham standing, terror to scare Harris and the heroine of Cornwell's dreams - Retribution will be Michael Joseph's biggest ever thriller launch.

One rainy night in New York City, outstanding law student Chloe Larson wakes from a terrible nightmare. Only it's not a nightmare - it's real. She has been savagely violated in her own bedroom, and now has to deal with the horror of nobody being brought to justice.

Twelve years later a very different Chloe is forging a formidable reputation in the Miami Dade State Attorney's Office, as a vicious serial killer nicknamed Cupid terrorises Florida - tearing out his tortured victim's hearts while they're still conscious. When the police stop a driver on the McArthur Causeway and a mutilated corpse is found in his trunk, it seems the hunt for Cupid is finally over. But as Chloe begins the task of prosecuting the suspect, she soon realises that this case will be anything but easy... Her past is about to force itself on her present - and the terror is only just beginning. Sometimes there's a price to be paid for justice. And sometimes that price is awful. Revenge could cost Chloe her sanity. The truth could cost her her life.

Jilliane Hoffman was an Assistant State Attorney between 1992 and 1996. Until 2001 she was the regional advisor for the Florida Department of Law Enforcement advising special agents on complex investigations including narcotics, homicide and organised crime. She lives in Florida and Retribution is her first novel, which in the hottest auction of 2003, has been sold throughout the world for unprecedented sums.

The movie rights for Retribution have been sold to Warner, and will be produced by the company behind The West Wing.

Press contact: Abbie Sampson, Michael Joseph / Penguin publicityTel: 020 7010 3273 / Email: abbie.sampson@penguin.co.uk

Jilliane on Retribution:

On a daily basis in Miami, both justice and injustice are dispensed at a furious pace in a less than perfect, overcrowded system. There are too many victims and defendants, too few prosecutors and judges. Restrained by the law, defeated by a reluctant and scared victim, or ignored by a jury, sometimes the right result eludes even the best of intentions.