The Jury is: You!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: To Kill A Mockingbird. Presumed Innocent. Defending Jacob. Twelve Angry Men. Oh, don’t even get me started. I adore legal thrillers, and devour them.

(And may I say? THE MURDER LIST was the NUMBER ONE legal thriller on Amazon this week. And here is the astonishing proof! Whoa. And um, now it is ON SALE! for 1.99. Whoa.)

But didn’t you adore Adam’s Rib? A Few Good Men. Compulsion. Witness for the Prosecution. Oh, as I said. Don’t get me started. But attorney/author Michael Kahn—welcome to Jungle Red!--has some faves of his own.

Great Legal Thrillers

by Michael Kahn, author of BAD TRUST: A Rachel Gold Mystery



"Do you ever wish you could write a real novel?"

Ah, yes. The Question.

Every writer of legal thrillers hears it. Usually served with a withering disclaimer, such as "I confess I haven't read any of your works" or "I'm just not what one might call an aficionado of the whodunit." As if the commandments Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai included, "Thou shalt place no Perry Masons before thee."

Welcome to the world of the literary snob, that rarified zone where the so-called genre fictions — mysteries, horror, romance — are the riffraff of fiction, grubbing out an existence in that noisy rock quarry far beneath that celestial realm known as "literature.” And no amount of examples from Erle Stanley Gardner to Scott Turow will convince our snob. That’s because, as he will snidely point out, you won’t find those books on the syllabus of any Great World Literature college course.

Okay. Let’s take him up on that claim. He may not realize that the legal thriller, with its courtroom clash of vivid personalities, compelling facts, and moral dilemmas, has inspired playwrights and novelists for centuries. 

Fictional lawyers and trials have played a significant role in literary classics since at least Geoffrey Chaucer’s 14th century masterpiece, The Canterbury Tales, whose cast of pilgrims includes the Man of Law. Others might point further back to the trial of Socrates in 399 B.C.E.

I’ve picked three of my favorite literary classics that use the courtroom as their dramatic engine. All three would make any snob’s list of great literature. The common theme in these three is a grim one: a courtroom is no place to seek justice, redemption, or satisfactory closure.

We readers watch from the courtroom gallery as the legal system grinds out injustice in the name of the law in these brilliant works of literature.

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Bleak House is one of the greatest novels by one of the giants of English literature. It is also, in the words of one legal scholar, “the ultimate indictment of law, lawyers, and the legal system in the English language."
The engine of this novel is a massive trusts-and-estates case that has been slogging through the Court of Chancery for decades. In a novel filled with wonderfully Dickensian names—the money-grubbing attorney Vholes, the arrogant baronet Sir Dedlock, the sleazy loan shark Smallweed—it is fitting that the lawsuit’s name sounds more like a double dose of symptoms from a liver ailment: Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

The essence of what Dickens has to say about justice and the legal system is captured in the novel’s extraordinary first chapter—which, in my view, is the most vivid opening chapter in all of English literature. It starts with the equivalent of a Hollywood tracking shot through the streets of London on a cold and muddy November morning:

“As much mud in the streets, as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so, waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill."

The sky is overcast, the city shrouded in fog, as we approach the Court of Chancery:

"The raw afternoon is rawest, and the dense fog is densest, and the muddy streets are muddiest, near that leaden-headed old obstruction, appropriate ornament for the threshold of a leaden-headed old corporation: Temple Bar. And hard by Temple Bar, in Lincoln’s Inn Hall, at the very heart of the fog, sits the Lord High Chancellor in his High Court of Chancery.”

Dickens then introduces us to the proceedings underway. He captures that lawsuit, every bit as foggy and dangerous as London itself, in one magical paragraph, which begins:

“This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated, that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least; but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes, without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises.

Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce, without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit.”

Finish reading that paragraph, and the rest of that enthralling first chapter, and you will be hooked.

Billy Budd: Foretopman by Herman Melville

The manuscript for this remarkable novella was discovered among Herman Melville’s papers after his death. Finally published three decades later in 1924, it’s now recognized as a masterpiece, second only to Moby Dick amount Melville’s works.

The pretrial plot is fairly straightforward: Set in 1797, the British Navy has been rocked by two mutinies. Billy Budd, a guileless young seaman, is impressed into duty by a warship in need of sailors as the Royal Navy struggles to confront Napoleon’s navy. The cheerful, innocent Billy, an orphan, is soon the favorite of the crew on his new ship. His only flaw: He stutters severely when under distress.

The malevolent master-at-arms, John Claggert, develops a hatred of young Billy, perhaps based on jealousy, and eventually accuses him of conspiring to mutiny—a profoundly serious charge in the aftermath of the other two mutinies. The ship’s decent and honorable captain, Edward Fairfax Vere, summons both men to his cabin, where he has Claggert repeat his false charge. Billy is literally rendered speechless—so upset that he is unable to respond to the accusation. The Captain, knowing the charge is false, tries to soothe him, but Billy, unable to speak, punches Claggert, who drops to the deck and dies.

Believing the law and the concern over the prior mutinies leaves him no choice, Captain Vere reluctantly convenes a drumhead court, i.e., a court martial held aboard a ship at sea. The trial, the jury deliberations, and the aftermath are among the most powerful and poignant scenes in all of Melville’s writings. Spoiler alert: the epilogue may make you misty-eyed as you read the words of the ballad sung by sailors around the world in memory of poor Billy.

The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare

The trial in Act IV of The Merchant of Venice has long been recognized as one of the most dramatic scenes in all of Shakespeare. It takes place in the Court of the Duke of Venice, where Shylock comes seeking to enforce a promissory note signed by Antonio, the merchant of the play’s title.

That note contains the infamous bond provision: If Antonio defaults, Shylock is entitled to the security pledged, namely, a pound of Antonio’s flesh. While that bond may seem absurdly grotesque outside the context of the play, by the time Shylock arrives in court he is by far the most complex and compelling character in the play, and the enforcement he demands makes sense within the play’s version of Venice.

Indeed, earlier in the play, when it appears that Antonio may default, one of Antonio’s friends asks Shylock why he would ever enforce such a bond. What is a pound of Antonio’s flesh good for? His answer, one of the most famous passages in all of Shakespeare, is “revenge”--revenge for the ways Antonio has abused him because of his religion:

“Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?

Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is?

If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?

If you poison us, do we not die?

And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?

If we are like you in the rest, we will resemble you in that.

If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his humility?

Revenge.

If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by Christian example?

Why, revenge!”

The great Shakespeare critic William Hazlett describes the courtroom scene in Act IV as “a masterpiece of dramatic skill,” explaining that “the legal acuteness, the passionate declamations, the sound maxims of jurisprudence, the wit and irony interspersed in it, the fluctuations of hope and fear in the different persons, and the completeness and suddenness of the catastrophe, cannot be surpassed."

Enjoy, in the theater or in one of the motion picture adaptations, including the most recent one with Al Pacino as Shylock.

So those are three of my favorite works of literature that qualify as legal thrillers. So here is my request: can you offer one or more legal thrillers from your own reading lists? Any language, any country, any century will do.

HANK: Oh, how wonderful! Loved reading this, and so wonderfully thoughtful. (Don’t you enjoy being here? Oh, we think about such wonderful things!) But I am in love with legal thrillers, as you well know, and listed above. I have left out SO many! So yes, Reds and readers, what are your favorites?

And hey--a copy of BAD TRUST to one lucky commenter, and THE MURDER LIST ebook to FIVE lucky commenters!






MICHAEL KAHN

A trial lawyer by day and a writer by night, Michael Kahn is the award-winning author of ten Rachel Gold novels (including his latest, BAD TRUST, the stand-alone novel THE SIRENA QUEST, another stand-alone novel THE MOURNING SEXTON (under the pen name Michael Baron); and several short stories.

His latest novel, PLAYED!, was published in July of 2017. As Kirkus Reviews wrote, “the spectacle of these ornaments of the Missouri bar attacking, undermining, and double-crossing each other provides brisk, sprightly entertainment, and the hapless defendant’s baseball background comes into play just when it’s most needed.”

A former elementary school teacher in the Chicago Public Schools, Mike wrote his first novel, GRAVE DESIGNS, on a challenge from his wife Margi, who got tired of listening to the same answer whenever she asked him about a book he was reading. “Not bad,” he would say, “but I could write a better book than that.”

“Then write one,” she finally said, “or please shut up. I don’t want to hear you fifty years from now telling your great-grandkids that you could have written a book.”

BAD TRUST

In this fascinating and fast-paced legal thriller, attorney Rachel Gold learns that family doesn't always come first...

An ugly trust fund dispute among siblings turns deadly when Isaiah, CEO of the family firm he stole from their father, is murdered in his office. St. Louis attorney Rachel Gold, hired to bring suit against Isaiah on behalf of his sisters, must now defend one against the charge of fratricide.

As Rachel and her team seek essential evidence, the widowed Rachel struggles with family issues of her own, including relationships with her young son Sam and her boyfriend Abe. The jury is still out on whether or not Rachel can create the work-life balance she is seeking.

Bad Trust, the 11th book in the fascinating Attorney Rachel Gold Mysteries, is the perfect pick for fans of Lisa Scottoline and Sara Paretsky.

. ..

The Writers Who Made Us

DEBORAH CROMBIE: I was very saddened last week to read of the death of British crime writer Reginald Hill. Many of you may have known Hill from the television adaptation of his Dalziel and Pascoe novels. But while the adaptations were entertaining (loved Warren Clark and Colin Buchanan as Dalziel and Pascoe), those who haven't actually read Hill's novels have missed out on one of the great literary lights of our generation. (I chose this older photo as I thought the sly twinkle was so expressive of Hill's writing.)

Hill's novels are literate, witty, and complex. His prose could make me catch my breath in delight--and envy. And even after twenty years of writing detective fiction, he could twist me around his little finger with a plot. There are not many writers who are such masters of misdirection that they could leave me smacking my forehead at the reveal and saying, "Of course that's what happened! It was there all along and I just didn't see it." And I, slow-poke that I am, cannot help but be awed by a man who wrote more than fifty novels in his career, starting with the Dalziel and Pascoe novel A Clubbable Woman in 1970.

When I'm asked what writers influenced me, Hill has always been, along with PD James, at the top of the list. (Not that I think I've ever come close to writing as well as either of them, but they inspired me to try.)

Contemplating this, I began to think about my fellow Reds, and to wonder what writers made you sit up and say, "Oh, I want to do that. I MUST do that, no matter what it takes!"

We all write crime, but our books are so very different, so I'm guessing that our literary heroes and heroines are different, too.

Hallie, Jan, Rosemary, Hank, Rhys, Julia, Lucy--who inspired you to pick up your pen, glue yourself to your keyboard, stay up until the wee hours (or get up in them) to fan that spark that would one day become a novel?

And here's a dare--keep it to two, if you can!

RHYS BOWEN: Oh Deb--Reginald Hill was one of my idols too. His novel On Beulah Height was one of the best mysteries I have ever read. I hold it up as the standard to which I aspire. Apart from the ladies of the golden age the person who most inspired me to write mystery was Tony Hillerman. When I discovered his books I was blown away. I was used to polite English drawing rooms as the background for mystery. Here were books that took me to a strange and exotic place, that gave me insights into a new culture and were terrific stories too. I wanted to write books with that incredible sense of place.

Oh, and I have to add that I had published a couple of mysteries when I read a book called Dreaming of the Bones, by a certain Deborah Crombie, and that blew me away too. So Deb, you have been a role model as well!

HALLIE EPHRON: Well, I have to add Reginald Hill to my TBR list. My lodestars are two, and they're not mystery writers: Lucy Maud Montgomery and Louisa May Alcott. Authors, of course, of Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, respectively, and creators of two great female character who were smart, mouthy, not so beautiful, and wanted to write, Anne Shirley and Jo March.

Cheating now - the first mystery I love Love LOVED was P. D. James's An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. Cordelia Gray is the character I'm always striving to write. And the first mystery with a plot I couldn't stop raveling and unraveling was Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent.

JAN BROGAN: Well, Presumed Innocent was definitely the mystery that most inspired me and I'll read anything Scott Turow writes. The two books that influenced me most as a child, though, were Celia Garth by Gwen Bristow, like Hallie, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. Those were the books that made me want to be a writer.

LUCY BURDETTE: Keeping it to two writers is really, really, really hard. I had no awareness as a kid that I would become a writer, but I was a huge reader. One of my favorite authors was Carol Ryrie Brink, who wrote CADDIE WOODLAWN and the most fabulous and probably underrated THE PINK MOTEL. Do you remember that one? A mysterious and run down pink motel in Florida is left to a father, who brings his family to the motel to get it ready for sale. Instead, the kids get drawn into the whimsical characters who come stay in the little cottages and in the end, manage to persuade their parents to hold onto the place. Charming and mysterious with great characters.

I would have to say EB White for my second pick. His characters are wonderful too--funny and endearing and each one different from the other. Listening to CHARLOTTE'S WEB and THE TRUMPET OF THE SWAN kept my family from coming to fisticuffs on long car rides. If I could only be one third the writer that he was! And if I could cheat and add more, I would (Kenneth Grahame, Nancy Drew mysteries...you get the picture!)

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN : Oh, kind of difficult! But really thinking about this...TH White's ONCE AND FUTURE KING was life-changing for me. I bet I still think about that book once a week.. For how a story can mean more than just the story, you know?

Also, okay pushing now, but they're similar I can't choose..Edward Eager and Jane Langton's magical adventure stories.. As for mysteries..Josephine Tey's DAUGHTER OF TIME.

ROSEMARY HARRIS: I never had that one, galvanizing moment that made me go Yowza! That's what I want to do! And I rarely read a book and think I want to try to do that. I was a big fan of the Alfred Hitchcock movies - for plot and mysterious doings - and the PBS Mystery series, mostly the Peter Wimsey series. And my books couldn't be further away from them in style and tone!

If there's someone I wish I could write like - present company excluded - it would be Carl Hiassen. He can tell a story with humor, smarts, and a bit of a social conscience.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: As some of you may remember, once I conceived of the notion of being a writer, I tried my hand at science fiction. My greatest inspiration (and still one of my favorite writers) was Lois McMaster Bujold. She blithely tosses together every genre imaginable in her books: high fantasy, theology and philosophy, mystery, romance, comedy of manners, hard science fiction, American and European history - and she makes it work, in what appears to be an effortless style.

Once I decided to attempt crime fiction, my two role models became Margaret Maron and Archer Mayor. Both of them write regional mysteries with authenticity and perfect attention to detail. Margaret's books leave me feeling as if I've taken a trip to North Carolina beside a clear-eyed but sympathetic native. And after reading one of Archer's books, I always feel as if I could drive blindfolded through the part of Vermont in which he sets his story. In addition, they have three-dimensional, fully human characters that I care deeply about.

Okay, I may as well go whole hog and add one more: I wish I wrote prose like Steve Hamilton: spare, literate, poetical. I'm never going to get there, but it's a good goal to keep in front of my eyes.

DEBS: How fascinating! Turns out I was at least partly wrong about our influences being different because we write such different sorts of books.

Rhys, On Beulah Height is my favorite Hill novel, too! (And thanks for the mention of Dreaming of the Bones. I'm more than flattered to be thought of in such company...)

Hallie, I loved Little Women but liked Little Men better, when Jo was grown up and in charge of her own life. I didn't read Anne of Green Gables until I was in my twenties, and I adored the books.

Sayers, PD James, and Josephine Tey, of course. But Hank, I LOVED The Once and Future King by TH White. I went through a period in my teens where I read everything Arthurian I could get my hands on, but nothing ever compared. And Julia, I love Lois McMaster Bujold, too. I even got to do a first read of one of her manuscripts once.

BUT! I cringe to say I've never read Scott Turow. Or Caddie Woodlawn. And I am entranced by the description of The Pink Motel. And I should add Carl Hiassen, and how could I not have read Archer Mayor? And I'm behind on Margaret Maron's wonderful books....

More books going on my TBR list, obviously. And so many books I'd like to reread. I think I should have "So many books, so little time," tattooed on my forehead.

But isn't it lovely that we never run out of things we want to read, or writers who make us want to be better?

JR readers, would you have matched the writer to the books? And should we give prizes to those of us who actually stuck to two?

Choosing a Point of View

ROBERTA: So far all of my published books have been written in the first person. This made my job pretty straightforward. As long as I stuck to my character's point of view, stayed in her head, I couldn't write a word unless she heard, saw, or thought it. It was like writing with blinders on.

I'm trying something different in my new book. The book has two POV protagonists who alternate chapters. This of course widens the possibilities of where I can take the action, but it also raises lots of questions. For example, does it work if the chapters are not balanced between the two characters? Will it work to tell the story as one character sees it, and then back up and tell again from the other's POV? And when I reach points in the story where both characters will be present, whose head I should be in?

So I'd love to hear your opinions about point of view--how do you prefer to write and what do you prefer to read?

JAN: It really depends on the story and the author. I think if the author has a great voice the narration is often stronger in the first person. I loved Scott Turow in first person, like him less whenever he writes in third.

Like you Roberta, I'm trying to escape the prison of first person -- sort of. The story is told by an unseen narrator who writes in the first person, but can see everything. So the effect is ominiscient -- almost. I tried allowing my narrator to go into everybody's head whenever I felt like it, but my writers's group got confused. Now I allow the narrator into only one viewpoint at a time and shift it by section - much like you are doing. I'm making mistakes, but I feel there's no point writing if I'm not going to try to experiment and grow!

HALLIE: I confess I love a single narrator. But it does mean when your character gets stuck in a dungeon the reader's stuck there with him. Writing Never Tell a Lie, I started to feel claustrophobic when I got myself locked in an attic with my character Ivy.

The book I'm writing has occasional scenes narrated by different characters, so the reader knows more than my protagonist - it feels like a good way to build suspense. But I'm not sure those scenes will survive.

In the last Dr. Peter Zak book, Guilt, I alternated between two characters' viewpoints -- and then in the final crescendo short scenes snapped back and forth between them. It was hard, when both of those characters were in a scene, to decide who gets the viewpoint. How do you decide??

ROBERTA: Oh Hallie, I was hoping you'd answer that!

RHYS: When I conduct workshops I teach that every book has a point of view that works better than others. If the story is stalled or not going well, I tell them to try writing it in the first person to see where the characters themselves want to go. I have written in first and third and multiple points of view and I have to say that both Molly and Georgie's voices came so easily to me. I almost sit back and let them write. My only pet peeve in books is a story written in the present tense. It annoys me.

ROBERTA: Watch out Rhys--Hank's series is in the present tense:).

HANK: Oh, sorry Rhys. It's because of writing for TV news, I think. I love first person present, because it allows the reader to make mistakes along with the main character. To misjudge and misread and then make decisions based on those wrong perceptions. Because of course, as the author, I know what's correct and what's really happening. But I don't have to tell Charlie McNally.

But I wondered if I could do it another way--not sound like Charlie McNally, not be in present tense. SO I wrote a short story in third person, just to see, you know? And it was a completely different experience. And so--empowering.
I think--the story decides how it's written.

RO: As it happens, the manuscript I just delivered has two POVs. The second POV only occurs in a few chapters, but I felt I had to do it to tell the story I was telling. I think it works..we'll see what my editor says. It's challenging to write in the first person, and I like the idea that my character knows things just a few moments before the reader does, but it can be exhausting to keep coming up with new ways for her to get information she needs to solve the crime!

ROBERTA: Ok JR readers, please pitch in with your opinions. And then come back often this week--we have a great line-up. On Tuesday, visit with Chris Knopf, author of the Sam Acquillo mysteries, who will talk about setting books in the Hamptons and writing for a small press. On Wednesday, visit with Chester Campbell to learn everything you need to know about blog book tours. And on Friday, listen in as literary agent Paige Wheeler talks about the book biz right now.