John Hart’s two New York Times best-sellers validate the decision he made in 2001 when he asked himself: “How much do I want to be a lawyer? How much do I want to be a writer?”

“I don’t think there’s any perfect time to start,” says Hart, 42, who adds that he wrote two early novels that were never published. He graduated from Davidson College, received his master’s degree in accountiwng from UNC Chapel Hill, and a law degree from Franklin Pierce Law Center in New Hampshire.

Hart’s circuitous path to what is clearly his calling has given him rich fodder for his best-sellers, both of which have been set in his childhood hometown, Salisbury. His family owned 500 acres near High Rock Lake, where he spent many hours exploring. “I had a real Huck Finn childhood,” Hart says. “I wrote Down River in homage to the memory of my childhood farm. My feelings for it are very deep.”

While Down River draws on this devotion to his family land, working as a lawyer taught him “there is no such thing as a criminal mastermind.” Both messages come through in his work.

“Everybody comes from some kind of family,” he says. His characters contain both good and bad, creating a tension that attracts readers.

Hart’s decision to commit to writing came after he had been in criminal law practice for 18 months. He hadn’t defended what he calls “the bad guys,” but rather “people doing stupid things.”

“Defense attorneys all come to a point — the line is right in front of them,” he says. For him, that denouement occurred when he was assigned to defend a child molester who admitted he was guilty and asked Hart, “How can we work the system?”

“I decided not to take the case,” says the father of two young daughters. Hart transferred to civil litigation, but during this soul-searching he’d confronted his passion to write, and he could no longer ignore it.

His wife, Katie, understood how much writing meant to Hart and supported him when he realized, “I can’t do this part time. I was going to really take the risk.”

Hart spent 11 months and two weeks in a carrel of the Salisbury Public Library writing The King of Lies, then went back to work at a paying job, this time as a financial advisor for Merrill Lynch, which brought him to Greensboro in 2002.

The book “was rejected many, many times,” he says. When it was published four years later, it became a New York Times Best-seller. The novel was nominated for the Mystery Writers of America’s Edgar Allan Poe Award as the Best First Novel by an American Author.

This May, his second novel, Down River, won the Edgar Award for Best Novel, which is open to any work in English. There were 600 to 700 submissions, and he was one of five nominees, including a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer as well as the winner of the prestigious Man Booker Prize in England.

Hart is published in 25 languages in 31 countries, and The King of Lies is slated for production as a feature film. His third novel, this time set in a fictional town, is due out in summer 2009. He also has two more books under contract.

With his success, Hart has linked his passions: family, writing, and protection of North Carolina open spaces. He launched Down River with benefits that raised $115,000 for the Greensboro Children’s Museum and $20,000 for Land Trust of Central North Carolina. He serves on the board of directors of each nonprofit.

Writing offers Hart flexibility that would enable him to live just about anywhere, but he says, “At the end of the day, we decided to stay in Greensboro because we’ve made so many wonderful friends. It’s a small-city feel with big-city amenities. Greensboro has a wonderful community of writers; I’m very excited to become a part of that.”