Review of "The President's Lawyer: A Novel of Suspense" by Lawrence Robbins

This review was first posted on Mystery & Suspense Magazine. Check it out for features, interviews, and reviews. https://www.mysteryandsuspense.com/

One-term former Democratic president Jack Cutler has been arrested for murder.



The victim is 32-year-old Amanda Harper - a junior lawyer who worked in Cutler's White House Counsel's Office.



Harper's body was found in Rock Creek Park, strangled, with rope burns on her wrists and ankles. Near the victim was a small, locked briefcase, with a dinner knife from the White House 'James Monroe Collection' wedged into the opening.



Cutler, who's married to Jess Friedland Cutler, and has two teenage children named Gretchen and Harlan, has a reputation for philandering.



And not JUST philandering. Jack is rumored to like the rough stuff, including choking and hitting women during sex.



Cutler knows he's in big trouble, so he calls the best criminal defense lawyer he knows, his lifelong friend Robbie Jacobsen.



Jack, who knows Robbie was once in love with Amanda himself, tells the lawyer, "There's no easy way to say this - Amanda and I, we started an affair." Robbie is hesitant to represent Jack, but the former president insists he had nothing to do with Amanda's death, and Robbie agrees to defend him.

As Robbie prepares for trial, there are flashbacks that reveal both he and Jack had difficult fathers. Robbie recalls an occasion in high school, when he was invited to dinner at Jack's house.



Jack's father Sherm, a hedge fund CEO who was constantly in the business pages, was berating Jack for getting a B plus on an AP American History exam. Sherm shouted, "B plus? You got a B plus? I own bonds with a better rating than that, you dumb f***. " Sherm went on shouting and haranguing until Jack stood up and confronted his father, with a dinner knife clutched in his fist.



As for Robbie, he thinks both his parents were insane.



Robbie's mother Evie suffered from severe depression and his father Nathan had anger issues. When Robbie or his brother Evan got out of line, Nathan would throw Evie's high-heeled shoe end over end, or beat the offender with a studded utility belt that had a large American flag buckle in the front.



Robbie remembers the imprint lasting for hours, even days. This went on until Nathan was fatally assaulted on his way home from work one evening.

After graduating from college, Jack went into politics.....



.....and Robbie studied law.



Jack rose to the presidency and Robbie became a preeminent Washington, D.C. defense lawyer with a knack for representing his clients. This comes in handy when Robbie defends the former president, because there's a mountain of evidence against Jack, including DNA, hair, phone records, the James Monroe knife, and more.



Author Lawrence Robbins is an experienced attorney who understands how lawyers work and what it's like to try cases in Washington, D.C. courthouses. Thus the novel's courtroom scenes feel very authentic, with jury selection, questioning witnesses, cross-examining witnesses, legal maneuvering, and so on.

The alert reader might detect hints about the denouement of the story, but there will still be surprises at the end. This is a devious mystery that will appeal to fans of legal thrillers.

Thanks to Netgalley, Lawrence Robbins, and Atria Books for a copy of the book.

Rating: 3 stars

Review of "12.21: A Novel" by Dustin Thomason

A deadly epidemic threatens Los Angeles - and the entire world - if the illness isn't contained immediately. That's the issue at the core of this compelling novel.

*****

It's early December 2012, and a number of doomsday cults believe the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world on December 21, 2012.



Aware that this means Mayan artifacts will garner exceptionally high prices, an indigenous Guatemalan man steals an ancient Codex from a 'lost' Mayan temple and brings it to Los Angeles, to sell to a relics broker.



For safekeeping, the relics broker brings the purloined Codex to Chel Manu, the Antiquities Curator of the Getty Museum.



Chel knows it's wrong - and illegal - to harbor the Codex, but she can't help herself. Chel is an indigenous Guatemalan, she can speak and read Quiché (the Mayan language), and reading the Codex is almost a religious experience for her. Moreover, the Codex seems to tell a story about the village of Chel's forebears.



Meanwhile, the Mayan man who pilfered the Codex winds up in a hospital, suffering from Fatal Familial Insomnia (FFI), a prion disease. (Prions are misshapen proteins in the brain.) Prion diseases are notoriously contagious, usually spread by eating infected animals, as happened with Mad Cow Disease.



Dr. Gabe Stanton, a prion expert with the Centers For Disease Control, confirms the Mayan patient has FFI, but can't understand the man's Quiché rantings.



So Chel Manu is engaged as an interpreter, and - to make a long story short - Stanton and Manu figure out the patient 'caught' the prion illness at the temple he looted.

Prion diseases are always fatal, and the Mayan man dies a horrible death. People who came in contact with the patient also get sick and die, and FFI threatens to speed through Los Angeles and spread to the world.



Thus Los Angeles is put on lockdown (can you imagine?) and Stanton and his team of researchers hurry to find a treatment for FFI. None of this will do much good, however, unless the source of the disease, in the jungles of Guatemala, is found.



Chel gets in trouble for having the Codex, but is given a reprieve to translate the document. Reading the Codex might help to determine the EXACT location of the temple that harbored it. When clues to the temple's location surface, a delegation goes to Guatemala to search, but it's a difficult and dangerous enterprise.



In the meantime, FFI is killing its victims; people are trying to sneak out of Los Angeles; there's rioting and looting all over the city; a doomsday cult plans to leave civilization and establish a community in the jungle; and more.



The Codex is difficult to translate because it contains glyphs and glyph combinations Chel isn't familiar with. So Chel gets assistance, and a fascinating Mayan story slowly emerges. For example, the Mayan village in the tale is suffering from a years-long-drought, and there are no trees, no food, no anything to sustain life; a high-ranking Mayan man dies, and his wife is expected to commit suicide; an influential Mayan man takes two children as wives, to protect them from a predatory dwarf; Mayan leaders are engaging in cannibalism; and more. (I listened to the audiobook of the novel, and the Mayan tale is rendered in the 'voice' of a Mayan man, which adds to the story's atmosphere.)



Can Stanton and his crew find a way to contain FFI? You'll have to read the book to find out.

Author Dustin Thomasen, who studied anthropology and has an M.D. degree, is clearly knowledgeable about diseases and medicine, as well as Mayan culture and language. I like stories about deadly epidemics, and this is a good one. Highly recommended.

Rating: 4 stars

Review of "Rogue Lawyer: A Legal Thriller" by John Grisham

Sebastian Rudd is a street lawyer who carries a gun and works out of a customized Ford cargo van.

The bulletproof vehicle - which doubles as an office - is kitted out with a table and seats; sofa; television; stereo system, Internet, refrigerator, bar, a couple of extra guns, and a change of clothes.





Rudd's only employee is Partner, a tough, heavily armed, former client who wears black suits and functions as Rudd's driver, bodyguard, confidant, paralegal, caddie, and friend.



'Rogue Lawyer' is composed of several linked stories, with Rudd representing a series of clients. Rudd isn't averse to bending the law, which he believes is necessary in the face of slick, lying, scheming prosecutors who care more about winning than justice.

While Rudd is defending his clients, he's also dealing with a witchy ex-wife named Judith.



Judith is constantly trying to reduce Rudd's court-ordered visitation with their 7-year-old son Starcher, which totals only 36 hours per month. So Judith keeps dragging Rudd in front of a judge with spurious (and not so spurious) complaints.



*****

I'll give some examples of Rudd's clients.

Rudd is the court appointed lawyer for a brain-damaged 18-year-old dropout called Gardy, who has long greasy black hair, numerous facial piercings, and a slew of tattoos. Gardy is charged with the sadistic murder of two little girls in the town of Milo. Rudd admits his clients are almost always guilty, but THIS TIME, Rudd is convinced Gardy is innocent



As the trial starts, a mob outside the courthouse is waving signs reading "Hang the Baby Killer" and "Crud Rudd out of Milo!".....and people clearly want to kill both Gardy and Rudd.



The trial proceeds, and in Rudd's view, "The State has no physical evidence linking Gardy to the murders. Zero. So....the State is doing what it often does. It's plowing ahead with lies and fabricated testimony."

What's a (semi) honest defense lawyer to do?

*****

Rudd previously defended a wealthy mob boss called Link Scanlon, who was accused of killing a judge. Rudd did his best, but Scanlon was convicted and sent to death row. Link's execution is now scheduled for tonight, and Rudd is spending the last few hours with his client.



Scanlon is griping about his situation, wishing he'd hired a 'Jew lawyer', refusing to see a spiritual advisor, and making calls on his (illicit) cell phone. Pretty soon, shocking things start to happen, much to Rudd's dismay.

*****

Retiree Doug Renfro isn't too savvy about the Internet, which allows a teenage drug dealing neighbor to piggyback on Doug's WiFi. The police think Renfro is selling drugs, and raid his home in the middle of the night with a SWAT team in full combat gear. The cops even bring a tank.



Things go badly wrong and Doug's wife and dogs are killed. In the confusion, Doug - believing thugs have entered his home - shoots and grazes a police officer.

The police engineer a cover-up, and Renfro is arrested and put on trial for shooting a cop. Rudd is incensed at the injustice and determined to help Renfro.



*****

Rudd is a fan of cage-fighting and has even invested in a young MMA fighter named Tadeo Zapate, who's very talented.



Rudd likes to see "bleeding eyes, gashes across the forehead, choke holds, bone-ripping submissions, and brutal knockout punches", especially when they're administered by Zapate.



Rudd would never miss one of Tadeo's matches, even if he has to take along his young son Starcher. Moreover, Rudd has earned a bundle on the brawler, and expects to make a lot more.

One day, a cage-fighter loses his temper and ends up being tried for murder, with Rudd as his defense lawyer.

*****

Rudd has additional clients as well, none of whom are outstanding citizens.

In the course of the story, Rudd is accused of jury-tampering; runs afoul of Assistant Police Chief Roy Kemp, whose daughter was kidnapped; gets flirtatious with Starcher's teacher Ms. Tarrant; extorts city officials; annoys judges and prosecutors; plays Dirty Golf; and more.



In all honesty, I didn't especially like Rudd, who's too much of a 'bad boy' for my taste, especially when he's joyfully 'screaming his head off' during vicious cage fights. That said, this is a compelling legal thriller with very good courtroom scenes.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Review of "Disorientation: A Novel" by Elaine Hsieh Chou

Twenty-nine-year-old Ingrid Yang, a Taiwanese-American graduate student at Massachusetts' Barnes University (BU), is writing a dissertation about the exalted Chinese poet Xiao-Wen Chou.

Before his death, Xiao-Wen Chou was a faculty member at BU, and he's now enshrined as the school's shining star.



The problem for Ingrid is that everything that CAN BE written about Xiao-Wen Chou's work HAS BEEN written, and she's struggling to find a topic for her research. Moreover, Ingrid is in her eighth and final year in BU's Ph.D. program, and her funding is about to run out.

Ingrid spends her days in BU's Xiao-Wen Chou archives, looking through boxes of the poet's papers and pretending to work.



Ingrid can't sleep, binges on snacks, has pains in her stomach, pulls out her hair....and makes no progress. Worse yet, Ingrid's Ph.D. advisor, Dr. Michael Bartholomew - who heads BU's East Asian Studies Department - keeps asking Ingrid when she'll complete her dissertation and schedule her Ph.D. defense.



Then one day, an apparent miracle occurs. Ingrid is languidly looking through a box in the Xiao-Wen Chou archives when she finds a cryptic note....a note that's clearly meant for Ingrid. The missive opens up a new, and VERY controversial, area of research about Xiao-Wen Chou.



With the help of her best friend, Eunice Kim, Ingrid pursues this new topic, which involves consulting a private detective, sneaking into files, breaking-and-entering, confronting a dyed-in-the-wool white nationalist, and more. All this is hilarious, which is expected, because the book is a satire.



That being said, the novel addresses serious topics as well, through the ensemble of characters. For instance, Ingrid has only dated White men, but resents White men who prefer ('fetishize') Asian women; Ingrid's White fiancé Stephen translates Japanese literature into English, though Stephen can't speak Japanese....it's strictly dictionary work; Ingrid, who has Taiwanese ancestry, is infuriated when people call her Chinese; Ingrid resents a fellow graduate student, Vivian Vo, who protests for the rights of minorities - because Vivian is high-profile and showy; as a child Ingrid forbid her parents to speak to her in Mandarin, and never learned the language; Dr. Michael Bartholomew marries a native Chinese woman named Cixi, expecting her to be a 1950s type housewife - but Cixi learns fast, to Michael's dismay; faculty and students at BU, when the opportunity arises, protest affirmative action and insist on their right to spew discriminatory speech; and more.





Some of the plot points, like the 'white nationalist' bent that crops up at BU, struck me as highly unrealistic (it sounds more like 'John Birch University' than a Massachusetts college.) In any case, the novel speaks, in part, to the concerns of Americans with East Asian ancestry.

The central theme of the book - Ingrid's unexpected discovery - demonstrates how far some people will go for fame and success. And it's quite far indeed!

I enjoyed the book and recommend it to readers who like literary novels.

Rating: 4 stars