Their careers and lives have taken divergent paths. Jake, a skilled trial lawyer, has become an out of control alcoholic who has barely gone to his office in his father’s firm in a year. Rich, grinding away, has become a partner in the same firm, Thompson and West. Javi, trying to get the right results for clients using the wrong methods has been disbarred and is working as a private investigator.
Norman West, Jake’s father, is a domineering man in the family and at the office. Jake has chafed all his life at his father’s control.
Rich is trying to get a drunken Jake home one night when there is a knock on the car window. When Jake opens the window a hooded gunman shoots Rich in the head with .44 Magnum and drops the gun. By picking up the gun, a deeply shaken Jake becomes the lead suspect.
Jake’s family life is a mess because of his alcohol abuse. On the night of Rich’s death his blood alcohol reading was .16. The average person is stumbling drunk at that level. When Rich found him that evening Jake was making a credible legal argument to a woman, not his wife, and a non-existent jury in an empty courtroom. Decades of heavy drinking are needed to reach such a tolerance.
Sioban McFadden, a bright and charming former Dublin detective, is the lead homicide detective.
Jake, prone to conspiracies, believes Rich’s death was connected to his last case - the defence of Tianna Walker who is accused of murdering two of her children by setting fire to their apartment while she was drunk.
I had more difficulty with Rich defending a criminal case than a conspiracy to murder him. He was a corporate lawyer dealing with complex contracts. To take on murder defence does not make sense.
The facts grow ever more complicated with more murders connections to the deaths of Rich and Tianna’s children.
With the value of real estate sky high in L.A. it is no surprise that a billion dollar development is involved in the plot.
There is an underlying legal complexity to the book. If a firm ends up in a situation where a client’s case intersects with another client there is a conflict of interest. If there is a direct connection the firm must not represent either client. While there may be some circumstances where the firm could continue with both clients the prudent course is to withdraw from both clients. Of course, that is not exciting and Jake is flexible with legal ethics.
His disregard for the ethics that have been established over centuries irritated me. The ends do not justify the means. Javi has been disbarred for such an approach to the law.
Jake will do anything for a client he believes in. That attitude inevitably means he compromises his integrity.
He is already in a precarious position because of a case in which he was ethically trapped by a false document created to confirm Jake was accessing documents to which he had been prohibited access.
I was reminded of Mickey Haller in the Michael Connelly series engaging in an unethical action to gain a mistrial for a client in a case about to be lost. I called the “Bloody Flag Move” sleazy. Jake, while handsome and charismatic and brilliant, is also sleazy.
There are other lawyers in the book who also act unethically. I do not excuse any of them.
If you like lawyers who consider ethical rules suggestions you will enjoy Jake.
When Jake and his team use legal skills by launching a civil action they resort to the approaches that dominate crime shows on T.V. They convince, entice, threaten and ignore the law.
The bad guys, including the lawyers opposing Jake, look to violence. It is constantly an option to solve a problem. Violence, threatened or actual, is dramatic but not convincing in big law firms and small law firms.
There was some nifty legal maneuvering by Thompson West against Jake - he is pushed from the firm - that was very credible while lowering the drama quotient.
Jake’s personal life plays a role. He is good at wanting to be a good husband and a good father. His teenage daughter, Chloe, is becoming hardened to his parental lapses and careful when he tries to make amends.
Cowan reminds me of Michael Connelly. He tells a story well. Though I have been unhappy with how several of Connelly’s recent books see detectives breaching the rules of lawful investigations Cowan goes further. Jake, his colleagues and Detective McFadden do not respect the law. They are cynical about the legal system. Their attitude is summed up by McFadden’s thought:
There’s doing what’s legal, and there’s doing what’s right.
It is the justification of vigilantes around the world.
I rarely read the blurb on the inside of the front cover but I did on Proof. It said Jake forms a team to “skirt the law in order to find the proof he needs”. “Skirt” is a euphemism. They break the law.
Cowan was a writer and executive producer of the legal T.V. series, Suits. As I read the book I found myself envisaging Jake as Harvey Specter (the actor, Gabriel Macht) in Suits.
Cowan writes a smooth driving narrative drawing the reader through the book. He has the skill to write a legal thriller focused on law rather than a conventional American thriller where the hero happens to be a lawyer.
It sounds as though this novel raises some important legal questions, Bill. I think 'thriller' is the right word for it, too, as it sounds as though there's plenty of action and plenty of twists and turns as the novel goes on. You bring up an interesting point about how far the characters are willing to go. I know that thrillers often ask the reader to let go of disbelief, but I generally like my characters to behave in believable ways. Still, this does sound like a solid legal thriller.
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