SANTA CRUZ >> When it comes to settings for her books, Leslie Karst frequently draws from her surroundings. Her “Sally Solari Mysteries” brought her titular protagonist to Karst’s hometown of Santa Cruz, and her new “Orchid Isle Mystery” series is set in Karst’s second home, the Hawaiian community of Hilo.

Following her debut in “Molten Death,” Valerie Corbin is back to solve another suspicious death in “Waters of Destruction,” which she will be discussing at Bookshop Santa Cruz Thursday.

It should come as no surprise that Karst has a background in writing — she majored in English literature at UC Santa Cruz — but she did not start out by writing fiction. For 20 years she was a research and appellate attorney writing legal briefs for the former Grunsky Law Firm in Watsonville.

However, she said that writing appellate briefs and mystery novels are very similar.

“When you write a persuasive brief for a judge, trying to get them to decide in your favor, it really depends on how you set out the story,” she said. “You have to play fair, you’ve got to use the facts of your case, but how you organize them and what order you talk about it and placing the legal authorities you have, it’s really similar to setting up a mystery novel, and where you’re going to put the clues and the red herrings, and how you’re gonna model the story. It turned out I had the brain for it.”

When the time came for Karst to retire from Grunsky, writing mystery novels seemed like the next step to keep her busy, given both her background in writing and lifelong love of mystery novels.

“I wasn’t going to sit around and watch TV all day,” she said.

Karst took inspiration from Santa Cruz for her “Sally Solari Mysteries.” The series centers around a fourth-generation retired attorney who goes to Santa Cruz to help out at her father’s family restaurant, Solari’s, on the Municipal Wharf. In the first book, “Dying for a Taste,” Solari’s aunt opens a French Polynesian restaurant inspired by Chez Panisse in Berkeley and is then murdered, prompting Solari to take over and try to solve the case.

The series ran for five more books, which merged the crime fiction genre with the culinary world and featured titles like “Murder from Scratch” and “Death Al Fresco,” several of which were finalists for Left Coast Crime Awards, which honor crime fiction.

Many of the elements of these books should be familiar to Santa Cruz readers. The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk is featured on the cover of two of the books, and Karst loosely based Solari’s on Gilda’s and the Solari family on prominent Italian American families like the Stagnaros.

“I’ve lived in Santa Cruz since ‘74, and I knew when I started writing mysteries, I wanted to set them — at least that first series — here in this town that I love so much,” she said.

When the time came for Karst to write a new series, she based it on Hilo, Hawaii, which she and her wife have lived part-time since their retirement years ago, splitting each year between Hilo and Santa Cruz. They also began receiving visits from Karst’s parents, whom she described as “lava junkies.”

“(They) thought nothing of hiking 20 miles to go and see an active lava flow,” she said. “We got the bug too, and the four of us ended up buying a house together in Hilo.”

These volcanoes provided the inspiration for “Molten Death,” the inaugural installment of Karst’s “Orchid Isle Mystery” series. The first book sets the tone with its protagonist Valerie Corbin, who lives in Los Angeles with her wife, Kristen, and visits Hawaii, a place neither of them have ever been before. When witnessing a lava flow, she sees a human leg that suddenly disappears. Nobody believes her, pushing Corbin to set out to prove her sanity and solve whose leg was submerged in that lava flow.

Karst said she wanted to showcase more of what Hawaii has to offer than just the tourist-heavy areas and activities depicted in other stories about Hawaii.

“It’s really varied, and it’s got not only the volcanoes, but it’s got the beautiful ocean and cattle country and desert and tropical gardens,” she said. “I’ve read a lot of mysteries set in Hawaii, and most of the ones I’d read were written by people that didn’t really know the place very well, and they’re set in touristy places and on cruise ships.”

Karst wanted to set the book in “the real Hawaii” beyond just luaus and tiki bars. It appears to have worked out, as she pointed out that reviews said reading the book was like “being an armchair traveler.”

“You really get to know the place well for people that haven’t been there,” she said.

“Waters of Destruction” picks up with Corbin and Kristen deciding to move to Hilo. When a bartender at a restaurant Corbin’s friend works at goes missing, Corbin is called to step in. The bartender’s body is uncovered in the Wailuku River, and Corbin’s friend, Sachiko, is considered a suspect. Once again, Corbin goes into action to figure out who was really behind the murder.

One element that Karst pulled from real life is the Wailuku River, a waterway on the island of Hawaii that has experienced many fatal drownings over the years due to its fast currents, underwater hazards and propensity for flash flooding. Its name even translates to “waters of destruction.”

“It is, in fact, a very dangerous river,” she said. “It’s about a mile from where I live there, and they pull bodies from it once a year.”

Karst will be discussing the book, including how Hawaii inspired it, do a reading and answer questions. She will also discuss her memoir, “Justice is Served: A Tale of Scallops, the Law, and Cooking for RBG,” which talks about the time she cooked for late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

“The book is about that experience, but it’s also interspersed with lots of things about RBG herself and why it is that she’s such an icon and was so influential in American jurisprudence,” she said.

Karst hopes people who read “Waters of Destruction” will enjoy a light traditional mystery and get a greater feel for Hawaii.

“I want them to want to come and visit — or at least enjoy the armchair traveling through it,” she said.

The author event is 7 p.m. Thursday at Bookshop Santa Cruz, 1520 Pacific Ave. The event is free, but people can register at Bookshopsantacruz.com/waters-of-destruction.