Lily White has features in common with several categories of popular fiction. Its mixing-and-matching is so organic, though, that finding any direct influence from another work is unlikely.

The murder-mystery aspect is drawn from the detective genre, a favorite source of plots for Isaacs's work. Lee's profession, and some of the problems she has to solve in the murder case, are reminiscent of the legal thrillers of John Grisham and similar writers. Lily White's own life story resembles another group of subgenres entirely. It owes something to the school of women's fiction which shines an intense ray on family interactions. It also has faint echoes of the personal memoir, a form that languished for . many years before becoming newly popular in the mid-1990s. The plight of those trying to fit into the self-assured world of WASP old wealth and privilege has been treated often in...