Bad Lawyer by David Cray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"'[...] juries are mostly too stupid to follow what witnesses actually say. They rely on manner, like they were at home watching television.'"

I suspect I like David Cray's Bad Lawyer (2001) so much because it pushes several of my 'hot buttons.' Serious flaws of the jury system are my main concern as to the American justice system: based on my personal observations I would rather have a trained judge decide my case than a panel of my "peers" who treat jury service as entertainment in their empty lives or, even worse, who yearn to be in a position of power to mete punishment to others.

Yet in my view, Bad Lawyer also delivers in suspense, tension, plot structure, and - many readers will probably like it - major, major plot twists. The story is narrated by Stanley Kaplan, a once extremely successful lawyer, with a 450SL and a co-op on Central Park West, whose career was destroyed by booze and cocaine. After a full-year rehab, Mr. Kaplan is starting again; his team includes an investigator and a legal secretary: the three of them are united by each having had a very painful past. They are so tight that, in the narrator's words, they form

"a curiously asexual menage à trois that maintained itself through a tyranny of memory, a pure terror of the past."

A woman hires Mr. Kaplan to defend her daughter who has been arrested and accused of murdering her husband. There has been a documented history of serious physical abuse by the victim, so Mr. Kaplan's is planning the prove self-defense. There are serious complication as the case seems to be connected with drug dealing and the accused had had three drug convictions in her past.

The case has been picked up by the media and it is being tried in the court of public opinion even before the criminal trial begins. This is another of my hot-button issues: not only do the media have the potential to pervert the course of justice but they frequently do it, ironically, in the name of justice. What right do the journalists or TV people have to shape the public's perceptions of the case by using trigger words, phrases or images?

Not only is the case tried in the media but there are two opposing camps trying to convince the public to their angle of looking at the case: on one side we have organizations that advocate women's rights - they focus on the history of physical abuse. On the other side we have the black community - the victim was an African-American - whose members claim that the white-owned media are trying to exonerate the killer before the trial begins. This is yet another of my hot-button issues: the near-automatic jumping of various social advocacy groups on the bandwagon of any event that achieves a degree of notoriety.

Anyway, the media battle is raging, which has absolutely nothing to do with truth or justice but all with entertainment. The plot takes several dramatic turns, which - for once - are mostly plausible. I will not provide any spoilers - as opposed to the usual explicit hints given by the publisher on the sleeves of the dust jacket. I highly recommend this legal thriller which, to me, is exceptional among the usual bestselling and totally cliché novels of this genre.

Four-and-a-quarter stars.


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