I’m a southern boy. I practiced law for thirty-five plus years, the last twenty-nine plus as a prosecutor. I loved that time of my life and handled a lot of cases, but it eventually took its toll. I was ready to leave that part of me behind. When I retired, I promised I would let all that go, but I discovered I couldn’t. I started writing because I kept remembering stuff, and I thought I could do a credible job recording it. Writing has helped me to get over it. If you read any of my books, I hope you’ll like them, but I love getting feedback even if you don’t.
Authors who have walked the walk always grab my attention. Turow qualifies since he’s been a lawyer for many years and knows the inner workings of the legal system. The story he weaves in his first novel shows this knowledge, but more importantly, the author lets the reader into interpersonal relationships that make the tale intriguing on multiple levels. For me, good mysteries keep me guessing to the very end, and this effort succeeds. You might not like everything about the protagonist, Rusty Sabitch, and that’s okay, too. There’s enough to like about him as he works through what really happened in a murder where he’s been blamed. Family secrets have always intrigued me because of some I’ve encountered in my life. Rusty deals with those secrets in this book, and finds some redemption too.
Rusty Sabich is a prosecuting lawyer in Chicago who enters a nightmare world when Carolyn, a beautiful attorney with whom he has been having an affair, is found raped and strangled. He stands accused of the crime.
This 'insider' book by a Chicago lawyer was one of the great novels of the 1980s, selling more than nine million copies, and was made into a famous film starring Harrison Ford. It's a supremely suspenseful and compelling courtroom drama about ambition, weakness, hypocrisy and American justice.
I really like this author because he’s got some chops to back it up. Grisham has been one of my favorite authors since he burst on the scene and part of it is due to him practicing law before he started writing. I can certainly relate. In this story, he hits some of the difficult issues of our time, that of racial injustice, especially in the south. Being a southerner, born and bred, I witnessed this growing up although not to the level in his book. What would you do if your young daughter was brutally attacked and raped? As a reader you are thrust into a legal drama and find yourself cheering for not only the father of the victim, but also for the lawyer defending him, Jake Brigance. There was no doubt after reading this novel that Jake would become a recurring character in other Grisham books.
______________________________ THE MULTI-MILLION COPY BESTSELLER
John Grisham's first and most shocking novel, adapted as a film starring Samuel L. Jackson and Matthew McConaughey
When Carl Lee Hailey guns down the violent racists who raped his ten-year-old daughter, the people of the small town of Clanton, Mississippi see it as justice done, and call for his acquittal.
But when extremists outside Clanton - including the KKK - hear that a black man has killed two white men, they invade the town, determined to destroy anything and anyone that opposes their sense of justice. A national media circus descends on Clanton.
This is a legal drama/thriller/mystery that I couldn’t put down. The author does a credible job describing court scenes, but it’s not the thrust of the book. What really grabbed me was the psychological battles going on within the family. When you’re a prosecutor and your son is charged with a hideous crime, how do you handle that horror? Conflicts with your career are only part of it. Like other books on my list, this book was made into a theatrical release and was done credibly on the screen. The resolution of the story was done well, in my opinion, but it leaves you feeling somewhat dissatisfied. Like life, not everything turns out perfect.
If your son was on trial for murder, what would you do?
Andy Barber's job is to put killers behind bars. And when a boy from his son Jacob's school is found stabbed to death, Andy is doubly determined to find and prosecute the perpetrator.
Until a crucial piece of evidence turns up linking Jacob to the murder. And suddenly Andy and his wife find their son accused of being a cold-blooded killer.
In the face of every parent's worst nightmare, they will do anything to defend their child. Because, deep down, they know him better than anyone.
Probably on many lists of greatest books of all time, I would recommend this novel as the ultimate example of why I wanted to become a lawyer. I wanted to save the world because Atticus Finch stood up against all odds. It’s also a great coming-of-age novel, as well. Told from his young daughter’s point of view, it’s an innocent telling of a story. You probably have seen the movie version, but the book made the tale that it is. Life lessons abound throughout and it’s important to see the tensions of almost a hundred years ago are still around today. We could all use a lot more Atticus Finches in our world.
'Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit 'em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird.'
Atticus Finch gives this advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of this classic novel - a black man charged with attacking a white girl. Through the eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Lee explores the issues of race and class in the Deep South of the 1930s with compassion and humour. She also creates one of the great heroes of literature in their father, whose lone struggle for justice pricks the conscience of a town steeped…
I like all of Connelly’s books, but the series that features the lawyer, Mickey Haller, is probably my favorite. Although I find the character somewhat unrealistic practicing law out of his vehicle, it is totally entertaining. The courtroom scenes have enough realism to make them worthwhile, and I want to see what the characters will do next. I could tell from the first book that there would be many stories, and there have been. His supporting cast is likeable as well as Mickey. It’s been many years since I was a defense lawyer, but I appreciate his style.
They're called Lincoln Lawyers: the bottom of the legal food chain, the criminal defence attorneys who operate out of the back of a Lincoln car, travelling between the courthouses of Los Angeles county to take whatever cases the system throws in their path.
Mickey Haller has been in the business a long time, and he knows just how to work it, how to grease the right wheels and palms, to keep the engine of justice working in his favour. When a Beverly Hills rich boy is arrested for brutally beating a woman, Haller has his first high-paying client in years.…
Reading was a childhood passion of mine. My mother was a librarian and got me interested in reading early in life. When John F. Kennedy was running for president and after his assassination, I became intensely interested in politics. In addition to reading history and political biographies, I consumed newspapers and television news. It is this background that I have drawn upon over the decades that has added value to my research.
It didn’t begin with Donald Trump. When the Republican Party lost five straight presidential elections during the 1930s and 1940s, three things happened: (1) Republicans came to believe that presidential elections are rigged; (2) Conspiracy theories arose and were believed; and (3) The presidency was elevated to cult-like status.
Long before Trump, each of these phenomena grew in importance. The John Birch Society and McCarthyism became powerful forces; Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first “personal president” to rise above the party; and the development of what Harry Truman called “the big lie,” where outrageous falsehoods came to be believed. Trump…
Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism
It didn't begin with Donald Trump. The unraveling of the Grand Old Party has been decades in the making. Since the time of FDR, the Republican Party has been home to conspiracy thinking, including a belief that lost elections were rigged. And when Republicans later won the White House, the party elevated their presidents to heroic status-a predisposition that eventually posed a threat to democracy. Building on his esteemed 2016 book, What Happened to the Republican Party?, John Kenneth White proposes to explain why this happened-not just the election of Trump but the authoritarian shift in the party as a…
Patriarch, Leo Berry, Sr. dies leaving a journal to the grandson who shares his name. As “Little Leo” begins reading his Papa’s words, it becomes apparent the book contains secrets never disclosed to the rest of the large family.
Now the young prosecutor has been entrusted with not only seeking redemption for his grandfather’s covert actions, but also administering the deceased man’s substantial estate. At the same time, Leo is assigned a homicide case containing its own mysteries. Perhaps his recently departed grandfather could even be connected to the potential dangers buried within.
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