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.

Perri, the mason of legal thrillers.

Legal thriller | Perri O'Shaughnessy | Unfit to Practice

Nina Reilly, the legal eagle who is almost too good to be true, is working on her relationship with Paul, her investigator, when, one tired night, she leaves her client files in her car (actually, her truck; Americans call those monster machines cars for some reason that the rest of humanity cannot fathom). Sure enough, in the morning, her car has been stolen, with the files. The car finds its way back, thanks to police who really don't like a defense lawyer, and don't believe they were there to start with, particularly as our lawyer refuses to release any information on what the files looked like or contained.

Except now her clients are getting into messes. Lethal ones. And suddenly, there is a pack of cases against her to get her disbarred as she is unfit to practice. But wait, there is a lawyer who specialises in defending such as her, and Paul introduces her ... to her ex-husband. Convolutions in the relationship, and shenanigans in the hearings.

You do know she'll come off smelling of roses, but you wonder at the same time, who is it who is out to ruin her (and if any clients need to be blooded at the altar of her ruin, so be it). Neat.

Somehow, I do like the Perri (Pamela + Mary, sisters) O'Shaughnessy books I've read (there's another one in the queue for writing about), but it's almost always picked up as a second choice. Something safe and not likely to overly horrify or to shake my thinking. Lazy Sunday reads. Really lazy.

By the pricking of my thumbs

Legal thrillers | Mark Gimenez (with an aside on Michael Crichton)

Well, it's clear enough that I read a lot faster than I write! Sorry for the delay [not that you care :)].

First off is The Common Lawyer, in which a biker-lawyer (a lawyer who rides a bike, no, not a motorbike, why does everyone assume a bike must be motorised?) whose 'speciality' is traffic tickets, suddenly finds a billionaire at his doorstep, wanting to retain his services. First, he wants to build low-income housing and needs Andy's help in getting locals to agree to the land use change. Then he gets floods of conscience about his ex-girlfriends, all 17 of them, because of his son, who is dying of a super-rare cancer. He wants to locate them and pay them millions, secretly, to assuage this suddenly dominant conscience. And Andy agrees to all this, because he is an unambitious laid-back guy for whom all this money is a flood that floats all his boats. Up until his life is in danger, and he starts getting smitten by conscience. OK, by now we're more than halfway into the book, and at the risk of spoilers.

Sample paragraph three, chapter 1:

True. But then, a certain degree of insanity was part of the job description for a hammerhead. Point of fact, you had to be freaking nuts to ride a mountain bike at these speeds over a single-track hacked out of the wilderness and teeter on the esge of a steep ravine with nothing but a foam-padded plastic crash helpmet standing between you and organ donor status. Nobody in his right mind would do such a thing.

Rating: Eminently readable, well-done suspense.

So why do I now have qualms about Mark Gimenez's books, having praised them well enough already? I'm getting deja vu here—the last writer who gave me these subliminal something-is-wrong-heres was Michael Crichton, who wrote these mainstream sf books that brought him fame and adulation. Crichton turned out to be a misogynist. Don't believe me? Check out the female characters in his books. All of them are flawed. It's like Crichton is visibly trying to write sympathetically about women, but he's finding it tough, like trying to write sympathetically about rabid skunks or baby-eating crocs. The only non-2D women in his books are baaaaad. Way bad, unreliable, evil out of confusion, and confused they must be, trying to do a man's job in a man's world. Like his editor told him that he need sympathetic women characters because the last person who wrote a bestseller without a single woman in it was Alistair Maclean in the early 1970s. Or like his marketing person told him women won't read books without women in it. Or like the token black or something. But he didn't really believe it.

Gimenez's women characters are sympathetic enough, mostly, or are they? The heroine in The Common Lawyer is a strong character, and very easy to like. The girls, in The Colour of Law and The Abduction are smart, savvy, intelligent, tough and very very cool. Note, the girls. Not the women. And his descriptions of the women in Dallas or Austin are positive when describing their physical charms (no other word fits), and negative when talking of their psychology. Baaad women. Sit. Stay. My subliminal analyst is screaming and jumping up and down.

The Abduction has rave reviews, and deserves them. It's a taut, well-paced story of, no prizes for guessing, the kidnapping of a girl. Her geeky and inept father is about to become an internet billionaire (it's not a 'program' or 'software' or, Tron forbid, a 'game' that makes his fortune; in these days it's 'an app'; maaaan, get a grip, an app??), and her mother is a basilisk of a lawyer who frightens to death all she glances at. But the guy who's going to find the kid despite all odds is her drunk of a grandfather, despised by all, a Vietnam war hero. With a mysterious connection to the girl. Assorted things which make me mutter and grind my teeth include a psychic and this aforesaid mysterious connection (I can say aforesaid in a review of a legal thriller, don't cavil at me), and a priest who gets someone in Confession after 30 years, and 'now said words he did not understand: “Because there is a bond you and Gracie share, a bond with evil that must be broken.” “Yes, there is. Father, how do I break this bond?” “You don't. Someone must die for the bond to be broken.”' Aaargh. Deus ex machina alert! But hey, these things apart, it was a fun read.

Rating: Grit your teeth at the Mysterious Connection and read the book. It's a fast read with lol moments, and very low on the gruesome meter. Mark Gimenez has a way of making words dance to a fast and peppy beat.

Now let me get back to I'm feeling lucky, and check if it describes 'Google from the inside' with accuracy or not.

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.

Race to save the accused?

Thriller | John Lescroat 

A Certain Justice by John Lescroat is a fast-paced story. (You can read the first chapter here, and get a good flavour of the speed of the book: www.johnlescroart.com/books/a-certain-justice/a-certain-justice/),

A black criminal murders a white man and is let off for lack of evidence. The white man's friends then lynch a black lawyer who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Kevin Shea tries to save the lawyer, but fails. When he wakes up the next morning, a photograph taken of the riot shows him clearly, and he finds to his horror that he is the prime suspect. The DA, the mayor, the Senator, other politicians, everyone is against Kevin. Abe Glitsky, the detective, just wants the truth. With enough twists and turns, and some solid characters you can care about, this is one suspense/thriller/detective story that is very satisfying. And works as a reminder that what seems open and closed, particularly in the days of instant television, can often be far from reality. There is revenge, mistrust, trust, schadenfreude, redemption, and love, unrequited and requited. Nicely packaged, and has a happy ending*.

Recommended reading.

The picture is similar to the cover of the 1996 paperback I read.

* l insist on happy endings. :)