Legal Thrillers for Kids

Legal Thriller | Theodore Boone: The Abduction | John Grisham

Into every hotshot best selling writer's life, some kids or grandkids will appear. Suddenly, the writer will realise that there's nothing really good out there for these super-awesome wonders of the universe. Thus did Terry Pratchett and John Grisham turn their keyboards towards the eager eyes of the tweens of the world.

The Abduction is the second Theodore Boone book. Theo is an eighth class student, and a lawyer at heart. The son of two famous lawyers of a small town in the USA, he is in and out of the courtroom, and possibly knows more about the law than many smart adults. Having liked the first book, we eagerly reach for this, the second.

And we are not disappointed. Grisham made his name as a pacy writer of complex legal twists and turns. He maintains much of that in the new child-friendly format, and the constraints of handling a story for the adults of tomorrow are handled deftly. These are not detective stories, despite the claim of one of the publisher's blurbs that link it to Nancy Drew (come to that, Nancy Drew was more about makeup than detection, meh); no, they bring you to the law.

Theo's good friend April Finnemore, has disappeared from her house in the night. Theo knows her mother is lying about the sequence of events, and tells his parents so. In the meantime, while police hunt all over the town, and the local TV channel keeps up a high-pitched repetition of meagre facts, April's father has vanished on a band-tour, and a convict cousin-cum-penpal of hers has been found in the vicinity, having busted out of jail. While the police try to convince the convict to confess and release the girl instead of angling for 'deals', Theo's ex-lawyer uncle gets tips from the local underworld, and the two of them pick up on clues to track April down.

There are side stories about dive-bombing parrots, and other everyday trivia. Still, you end up carrying away lessons about your rights, city ordinances, abuse of power and position, and other righteous stuff in a very slickly packaged story for kids of all ages.

Does that mean I will tell you about Theodore Boone and Theodore Boone: The Accused​? Heh heh. Hang around. I read those some months ago, and may get around to telling you about them some day. Or you can just go read them for yourself.

Reading three books at the same time

Fantasy | Secrets of Goth Mountain | Gary J. Davies
Legal thriller | Reversible Errors | Scott Turow
Fantasy | Mad Ship | Robin Hobb

Here's the thing about reading three books at the same time: it's confusing. Which book do you really want to read? First. (You want to read all books if you're like me). I was going through a slow patch last month, and really, didn't feel like doing anything. Even reading. (Horrors!) So I picked up three books at the same time (never take medical advice from me).

Now, of the three, Gary Davies' book moves the fastest. Unfortunately, it's an ebook, and so not as amenable to being read in all sorts of places (it's weird to open your laptop and chuckle in a doctor's waiting room, for example). So it ended up being the only one of the three I haven't yet finished. You have in it Johnny Goth, who has special powers (like extra-keen super sight, hearing and strength), but who's been taken away from Goth Mountain by his mother, since she doesn't want him to disappear, like his father did. He's engaged to Angela because she wants it that way. He has a watch with his father's image engraved on it, along with his own. The images age.

In the meantime, near Goth Mountain, Fenster the logger wants to grab the mountain so that he can cut the old-growth forests. The native Americans on the mountain will not stand for it. There is the teacher, Elizabeth Winters (we all know she will end up with Johnny Goth instead of Angela), and Johnny's childhood friends, including Dooley Simple who convinces the bark of several trees to grow in smiley shapes, the shaman Two Bears, and the shape-shifting Ned. Ranged with the villains are Skunk Fenster, the goonish nephew of Fenster the logger, the Sheriff (owned by the logger) and Mr Dark, an evil entity that feeds on humans and other beings. Of course, given that the market is for white males, Johnny is not a native American. Duh.

Yep, shenanigans all around. A Wild West story with supernatural beings. Keep tuned. I'll write it up later.

Reversible Errors refers to the legal term that gets trials thrown out on appeal. Rommy Gandolph is about to be executed for three gruesome murders. The federal appellate court (I'll never understand the USAn legal system, so I'm careful to copy-paste the terms) has drafted corporate lawyer Arthur Raven to help him draft his last appeal. Arthur used to be a public prosecutor, then moved to the richer fields of corporate practice. He's a gone case, unattractive and sentimental, and has resigned himself to never marrying. He also has a schizophrenic sister to look after, which doesn't help. Ex-judge and ex-con Gillian Sullivan had judged the case originally. She's been disgraced as taking bribes for cases, blackmailed by lawyers who found her guilty secret. Larry Starczek the detective who ran the original case, is still trying to get somewhere with his true love, Muriel Wynn, the prosecutor. Both are married to other people whom they don't love. The reopening of the case throws them together.

The story see-saws between Arthur's team proving the client innocent, and Muriel's team proving their case was solid all along. Except that both sides are being played. As each side sees an ascendant in their case, so do the two couples, Arthur and Gillian and Muriel and Larry, seem to come together. As their cases slide downward, so do the relationships. Since I'm not going to spoil the end for those who want to read the book, let me say that one relationship survives, and the other crashes, exactly in tune with the respective cases. Yeah, wait for the last chapter. It's a decent whodunit as well; don't get misled by the author's emphasis on the relationships.

Mad Ship is the second book (of three) in 'The Liveship Traders' series. As usual, I hit a series in the middle (what's with me??). This book is the slowest moving as well as the fattest of the three books. Most series authors walk a line between writing the second book for the fans of the first, and writing it for new entrants like me. Robin Hobb, aka Megan Lindholm, takes you on a round of introductions of practically every character who populated the previous book, including the liveships, so I'm guessing she chose the first option. Liveships are constructed of wizardwood, and are 'alive'. They are characters, too. A liveship with a good relationship with the crew and trader family it belongs to, can outrun any other ship on the world. Bingtown, where the Traders live, pays rates and taxes to the Satrap of Jaimillia. Unfortunately, the new Satrap is a spoilt teenager who is tying up with the villainous Chalcedeans. Along the Rain Wild River are the Rain Wild Traders, a secretive and deformed group who are the only source of wizardwood. The river eats any other wood than wizardwood, so only Bingtown trades with them. There are also pirates, led by Captain Kennit, who wants to be King of the Cursed Shores, the only human-populated part of the planet.

Liveships need a family member aboard. Vivacia has been taken over by Kennit, but Althea, the daughter of its old captain, still hopes to wrest it from her brother-in-law, Captain Kyle Haven (not a Trader-born), who has turned slaver to save the family's fortunes. Kennit is trying to corrupt her nephew Wintrow, but she doesn't know that. Having proven her ability to run a ship on Ophelia, she is torn between her newly rediscovered love Brashen Trell and Ophelia's captain's son, Grag Tenira, who loves her unrequitedly. There is Amber the beadmaker and wizardwood carpenter, who is on the side of the slaves and also on the side of the mad ship Paragon. Althea's sister, mother and niece are wondering whether to let her niece, Malta, marry a Rain Wild trader, Reyn. Reyn's mind is being torn up by the dragon who lives in the last dragon egg (the shell of which is wizardwood), because she wants to be freed. Sea Serpents are trying to retain their sentience, and dying out all over the planet. The Elder Race, which lived alongside the dragons, died a long time back, and only the Rain Wild people have deciphered some of their secrets.

By the time I was finally engaged with the story, I was 6/7 of the way to the end. And it bugged me that the end of the story is in part 3. Fortunately, I can guess what will happen, muwahahaha.

It's not a bad book by any means, well written. A liveship is an interesting concept. But too slow. Also, as usual, I wonder why people have to revert to Victorian customs in fantasy lands. Especially when it's clear they came from Earth at some time in the past, and well into our future.

And, drat, I read two more books in between. So I'll write them up, too, before telling you all about Goth Mountain.

Read Reversible Errors if you like legal thrillers. Scott Turow writes well. This is not his best book, though. John Grisham fans will probably like Scott Turow books.

 

Read Mad Ship if you like complex stories with lots of characters who have emotional issues that they need to resolve. Anne McCaffery readers would like these books.

 

Read The Secrets of Goth Mountain if you like fantasy placed in modern settings. Light reading with happy endings. It reminds me of Disney's Hot Lead and Cold Feet. With Added Nature Powers. Oh, and it's free in July 2014.

Sinister medicine

Medical thriller | Robin Cook | Fatal Cure

Here are the promised mutterings about the Robin Cook bestseller. I reread Fatal Cure a few weeks ago. It was a very fast re-read, while searching for the other book I was reading then (which was finally found under a sofa cushion). I'd planned to look up just a few pages, but ended up reading almost the whole book again. Sigh. I should be less easily distracted, but it's not my fault.

Robin Cook sprang upon our attention in the 70s, coming up with one best-seller after another. Mostly, the protagonist of the books was a young woman doctor, facing some or the other prejudice (sometimes, extreme prejudice!) and a mystery. There would be some life-or-death situation, medicine, more medicine, friends, supporters, evil villains, you name it, basically the paradigmatic medical thriller. As a result, I was firmly convinced the writer was a woman, and poutily refused to believe that he was, in fact, a man after all.

And, despite the change in technologies and many more writers entering this field, Robin Cook remained a name to conjure with.

Now, looking back with a more jaundiced eye, I feel the characters in the books were less solid than I'd originally thought, and the writing was more simplistic than simple. Or maybe the editors felt less confident in tackling a Big Name author as the bestsellers piled up.

Anyway, this one starts with a bang. Para three onwards:

Part of Sam's good fortune had always been his health, yet at half past four on February seventeenth, something strange began to happen. Numerous water molecules within many of his cells began to split apart into two fragments: a relatively inoffensive hydrogen atom and a highly reactive, viciously destructive hydroxyl free radical.

As these molecular events transpired, Sam's cellular defenses were activated. But on this particular day those defenses against free radicals were quickly exhausted; even the antioxidant vitamins E, C, and beta carotene which he diligently took each day could not stem the sudden, overwhelming tide.

That's actually the key to the whole mystery. If you know what the diagnosis is, you can work out the who, why, and how of the rest of the story as the rest of the clues come up. But you can't, can you? Even if you are a doctor. Robin Cook specialises in the obscure medical fact and the complex interconnections of hospitals and doctors and the entire ecosystem. You think it's a spoiler? Hey, it's paragraphs 3 and 4 of the whole book! Blame Cook, not me.

So, you have new doctors Angela and David Wilson joining a town hospital after getting sick of the big city. (This part is very reminiscent of Grisham's The Firm in how the new recruits are wooed). Their paradise gets its first jolt when a missing man turns up dead and buried in their new house. Then David's patients start dying despite all his very best efforts, just like those of his suicide predecessor. And Angela's boss starts harassing her. The more they probe, the more the locals close ranks against them.

Despite some clunky scenes every now and then, the book pushes on relentlessly to its inevitable conclusion. (Actually, I don't believe that people are so grimly decent and polite as American novelists make them out to be. But that's a quibble.)

To be honest, the story is better than I'm letting on, and the writing is, well, Robin Cook. An easy read for a lazy Sunday or two. If you like medical thrillers, this is a shoo-in.

Game of blackmail

Legal thrillers | John Grisham

The Associate, is stated by the blurb to be 'reminiscent of The Firm,' which it is, somewhat. You have a young new lawyer, forced into doing things he wouldn't of his own volition, and using his cunning to get out of it. TL;DR summary: The Firm is better. 

The Heirs of Perry Mason

Legal thrillers | John Grisham, Mark Gimenez

Strange how all legal thrillers have covers with a man in a suit hurrying in silhouette against an almost monochrome background. Or maybe that's the sampling effect: I've just finished John Grisham's The Appeal and Mark Gimenez' The Colour of Law. The Appeal has a shadow on a red background, Grisham's name in large letters; The Colour of Law is green with the mandatory silhouetted man, the book name bigger than the author name. Mark Gimenez is billed in blurbs as “the next Grisham”. So. Face-off time.

The Appeal is about the appeal against a jury verdict that finds a chemical company guilty of having poisoned the water of a town with toxic wastes. The owner wants to ensure that the Supreme Court (of the State; this terminology is confusing to Indians like me, who have only one Supreme Court) rules in his favour. For some reason, some states in the USA elect their Supreme Court judges. So, he tries to buy his man into the slot. The tale gets murkier and murkier, and I despaired of the rabbit being pulled out of the hat, braced myself for not getting my mandatory happy ending.

The Colour of Law is a more personal story. A hotshot corporate lawyer makes an election speech which a judge takes seriously enough to appoint him as the defending lawyer for a black prostitute accused of murdering the son of a Presidential candidate. Does he manage to wiggle out of it, or does he lose everything? No spoilers here; the back cover warns you he loses his wife, his house, his cars, his fat salary...

Honestly, I preferred The Colour of Law. It's more optimistic. The Appeal is relentless in showing you how easily the justice process can be subverted with enough money. And there lies the loss of appeal. Grisham wants to tell you something. Gimenez wants to show you something. Betrayal vs. redemption. Which is likely to be the more attractive story?

Gimenez really does write like the early Grisham: fast-paced, witty and pithy. I cringed at some of the descriptions (do people really think like that?) but they remain at all times in character. There is some lyrical writing there, and strong characters, like Boo. (Oh, yes, this is Gimenez' tribute to To Kill a Mockingbird).

People in the USA should read The Appeal and do something to improve the situation. People everywhere can have a great time with The Colour of Law. I'm going down to look for more books by M Gimenez.

Samples:

The Appeal:

The clerk tapped lightly on the judge's door, then took a step inside and proudly announced, 'We have a verdict,' as if she had personally labored through the negotiations and now was pesenting the result as a gift.
The judge closed his eyes and let loose a deep, satisfying [sic] sigh. He smiled a happy, nervous smile of enormous relief, almost disbelief, and finally said, 'Round up the lawyers.'

The Colour of Law:

Run-down strip centers offered pawn shops and liquor stores. Ramshackle frame houses slanted at twenty-degree angles, their paint peeling like skin from a badly sunburned body. Sofas sat on droopy porches, old cars were jacked up on cement blocks in the yards, garbage was backed up at the streets, and black burglar bars guarded every door and window of every house and storefront as if each structure were its owner's personal prison.