About book TRIAL - A Legal Thriller: Clifford Irving's Legal Novels: Book 1 (2014)
A brilliant courtroom drama. Simple as that. Actually the story follows one attorney as he comes back from a conduct suspension and takes on two cases which eventually cross paths. Sometimes courtroom dramas can drag due to the boring details that court actually entails. This story leaves out all the side bars and removals of the jury from the court room to keep the story flowing fluidly for the reader.No give aways as to the plot except to say that the story is set in Texas and that both defendants are on trial for murder. The attorney is basically a good guy and while it touches on his somewhat complicated personal life, it doesn't dwell on that. For once, although there are other hard drinking attorneys, the hero isn't one of those which is a refreshing change of pace.This book was written in 1991 when people were not as constrained by the ridiculous political correctness that is currently en vogue. Thus, some realities that may make younger readers feel that this is almost surreal but these are the facts: the female judge is portrayed as a bitch and is treated poorly and written to behave poorly. Young female attorneys and wannabes - believe it or not, the law was a mans world for many years and women had just begun to make some in roads at this time. A woman on the bench was a rarity. She also smoked while on the bench. Yeah, that really used to happen. Go talk to Ripley - believe it or not.Women are written about in a pretty degrading way. Again for young women, it took many generations of women before you to win the battle to be portrayed in real life in a dignified way. Yes, men used to speak to us and about just the way it is written because after all, life imitates art. You are now reaping the benefit of the many fights that came before and equality is still a long way off. Be grateful - especially if you are young and in this profession. Some women put up with some real shit to bring you the more politically correct workplace that appears for you now.That being said, it brings back wistful reminders to older readers of the days we were allowed to drink at work and tell off color jokes without fear of being hauled before an EEO commission and crucified. There are some great lawyer jokes inserted, some very off color. Deal with it. Likewise there are jokes and degrading verbiage about Hispanics and Asians and African Americans. If you are too sensitive and not adult enough to consider time and place, then this book isn't for you.On the flip side - if you love well drawn characters, a great and fairly accurate portrayal of court procedure (even if it is a little abridged to make the story flow) and you want to feel what Houston must be like (the descriptions are awesome) and you love a well written book, then by all means, grab this one. The author added an addendum at the back stating that his work is generally available for between $2.99-5.99 on Nook and Kindle. My advice is to stock up on his work and take a great vacation or staycation and read from a pretty wide variety of genres from which he has written. Why not 5 stars? I have to hold back at least one for the degradation of women. Solidarity!
I'm going to be really, really kind and give this one 3 stars. It is right up there towards the top of the most over-written books I've read. When the narrator says that something is going to be boring and goes ahead and tells it anyway...not just once, but several times, I have to wonder who is editing this stuff. After going through page after page of boring testimony then we have to go through page after page of defense and then prosecutorial summation! Blah, Blah Blah!!So whatever happened to the discovery phase?? There was so much that was sprung in the trial that should have been brought out in discovery...I know it might have hurt the plot line, but other writers get around this issue.There was page after page of marriage, divorce, soul searching, etc., etc., that had NOTHING to do with the main plot. I kept hoping he'd tie it in somehow, but never did. Neither were the affairs.On top of all of this, this was a book that was SCREAMING to be told in first person. Instead of the author TELLING us what was his characters were thinking and doing, why not just let them say it for themselves??That was the bad. The good, and only redeeming thing about this book was that the story...minus all the meaningless crap...was fairly compelling.
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This had a good but decently predicable plot--I figured out what would happen, but the way it happened was different than I had suspected. It took a while for me to get into it. The narrative is written in a very tell-not-show way, which I tend to dislike, but the action was good.This book did bring up an annoyance I have with the law. It seems to me that a lawyer's loyalties shouldn't be to help their client in the best way possible if they've done something against the law. Criminal lawyers who get big bad clients off even when they know their client has done what they're accused of or worse shouldn't be getting a big payoff, they should be getting jail time themselves. I don't understand why knowing what a client has to be done--it makes the lawyer complicit in the crime, which a layman would go to jail for. We have a frustrating legal system!But the book, yes. Good action, fully written out closing arguments, definitely a lawyer's book. Not really my style.
—Maree
I found this book in a list of recommended courtroom dramas. It's really good.Warren Blackburn is trying to rehabilitate his law career after signing his name to an affidavit that contains information he knows is false. He was trying to help someone get a lighter sentence, believing the man's sob story about needing to stay out of jail to help his kids. Turns out it was bullshit. Warren was lucky to get off with a year's suspension and and probation.Now having to resort to scrounging up whatever cases the judges will throw at him to defend indigent clients, he stumbles on a capital case, which, on the surface appears to be a prosecutorial wet dream and should plead out quickly. Problem is his client is innocent of the murder of the Vietnamese man who was killed in a fit of road rage. We're given that up front. He’s been seen committing the murder. Of course, we all know about eyewitness testimony: “As for Siva Singh, Warren saw her as a sincere woman who believed in law and order and wanted to help the police. Eyewitnesses were always so sure of what they had seen. Once they had committed themselves to a story, they had a vested interest in keeping to it. Most eyewitnesses don’t have time to tell red from green or short from tall. They make it up later, without realizing it. Everyone seemed to know that except juries.”And then Warren is offered second chair in a big murder case where the client is most certainly guilty. Under pressure from the judge to settle this slam-dunk-for-the-prosecution case, Warren is soon faced with having to take over the big case when the lead attorney dies of a stroke. The case involves the murder of her husband by a rich woman suspected of having been involved in several other murders. She's claiming self-defense, that her husband attacked her with a poker so she had to shoot him. But one evening during a practice session for the trial she reveals her hatred for Asians, and Warren happens to see some peculiar damage on the front of her car. Damage that could possibly link his two cases together and put him in a horribly awkward position. Books that present characters with a real moral dilemma are always more interesting than those that don't. This book has a doozy. The outcome is quite satisfactory.
—Eric_W
