My Choice for Winner of the 2018 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction

Following a personal tradition I have read the shortlist for the 2018 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and posted reviews of the individual book and will now put forward my choice for winner.

The shortlist was composed of:

1.) Proof by C.E. Tobisman;

2.) Testimony by Scott Turow; and,

3.) Exposed by Lisa Scottoline.

The actual winner was Proof by C.E. Tobisman.

I completed reading the books on the shortlist earlier this week. All were good books.

It does seem that the “thrillerization” of American crime fiction now includes legal mysteries. All three books had distinct elements of the thriller in their plots. At times each of the lawyers was far from the courtroom in their actions.

In considering which book I thought should have won the Award I look at the key Award criterion which sets out the Award is to go “to a book length work of fiction that best illuminates the role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change”.

Proof is the story of Caroline Auden, a solo practitioner in Los Angeles who engages in a quest to prove a huge charitable organization, Oasis, is engaged in systemic elder abuse.

The press release announcing the winner said with regard to Proof:

‘The Selection Committee praised the novel for advancing Lee’s legacy and her charge to award legal fiction that shows how lawyers can change society.

“‘Proof’ best captures the spirit of iconic characters, role of the legal profession in addressing social issues, and the concluding legal monologue of ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ and ‘Go Set A Watchman,’ ” Green said. “Caroline Auden is the perfect cross between lawyer Atticus Finch and the grown up Scout.”

It was very interesting to read of Auden’s computer skills in doing research for evidence and how she lived on the streets of Los Angeles with her Uncle Hitch when a killer was searching for her.

With regard to law Auden’s cause in challenging elder abuse is righteous but I struggle with her “role” as she engages in computer hacking in her good cause. I accept lawyers breaking the law can create dramatic legal fiction but I do not think such conduct “best illuminates the role of lawyers in society”.

Further if the power of lawyers “to effect change” comes from breaking the law we are on our way to ending “The Rule of Law” so painfully constructed over the last 800 years.

And what is the purpose of the oaths for lawyers being admitted to practice law in which they swear to uphold the law if they gain praise and reward for breaking the law?

Testimony by Scott Turow featured a middle aged mid-American male lawyer, Bill ten Boom, who joins the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He has been chosen to investigate the alleged mass murder of 400 Roma in Bosnia long after the end of the cruel war that divided that nation.

In his position he illustrates the role of lawyers in seeking to impose justice through an international court which will try those who have committed crimes against humanity.

Can lawyers and judges deter the next megalomaniac dictator from committing mass murder? I liked Boom’s reply to that question:

"How's this, Goos? I know this much: Justice is good. I accept the value of testimony, of letting victims be heard. But consequences are essential. People can't believe in civilization without being certain that a society will organize itself to do what it can to make wrongs right. Allowing the slaughter of four hundred innocents to go unpunished demeans the lives each of us leads. It's that simple."

If we are to strive for a world that has accountability for state mass murder we need such lawyers and judges.

In Exposed by Lisa Scottoline her counsel, Mary DeNunzio, commences a lawsuit against a company which has fired an employee with a desperately ill daughter. The company is seeking to contain its health insurance costs by ridding itself of an employee whose child is bound to bring about increased expense.

Through the court action DeNunzio is attempting to bring change in health coverage for workers by challenging corporations denying health benefits due employees and their families.

Of all the books she is the lawyer most directly attempting to “effect change” for her court action seeks to use a federal statute on disabilities to prevent an employer from firing an employee over health insurance costs.

Of the books I thought Testimony best met the criterion of the “role of lawyers in society and their power to effect change”. I would have chosen it for the Award. Proof and Exposed had lawyers, like myself, representing individuals taking on corporations trying to take advantage of people. Testimony had a bigger cause in working to change the world.

Proof by C.E. Tobisman

Proof by C.E. Tobisman – Caroline Auden is a lawyer unlike any I have read of in fiction or encountered in real life. I know many lawyers afflicted with Auden’s obsessive personality but none who have her hacker level computer skills. For most lawyers computers are research and word processing tools.

Auden is a solo practitioner in Los Angeles. She left a large firm in dark circumstances often referred to in Proof but never clearly stated. I expect the plot of the first book in the series, Doubt, explains what happened to Auden.

As the book opens Auden is dealing with the death of her beloved Grandma Kate at The Pastures Assisted Living nursing home. It falls to Auden to deal with her grandmother’s affairs as her mother Joanne has a manic personality and her Uncle Hitch, after being forced from the L.A. Police Department, has descended into an alcoholic oblivion that has driven him to the streets of L.A.

At the nursing home Auden is shocked when the administrator produces a recent holograph, handwritten, will in which her grandmother has left all her possessions to Oasis, a charitable organization devoted to re-training the lost of society and returning them to self-sufficiency. A caregiver from Oasis advises her that her grandmother wanted to help the good works of Oasis. Still Auden cannot understand why her grandmother would, near the end of her life, would abruptly change her will.

More or less resigned to the will Auden’s attention turns to her grandfather’s watch, a beautiful work of art, but is missing from her grandmother’s room. When Auden finds out a caregiver from Oasis picked it up from the watch repair shop her frustration with Oasis turns to anger.

A bit of investigation determines Oasis is not a registered charity which shields its books from public scrutiny. Auden is convinced Oasis, through its caregivers, is influencing elderly nursing home residents to make wills in favor of Oasis.

Auden files a lawsuit against Oasis asserting “claims for undue influence, fraud and elder abuse” but gets nowhere in court.

She tries to get the District Attorney’s office to investigate Oasis. There is little interest in pursuing Oasis. Founded by a beloved children’s entertainer, Duncan Reed, and carried on by his son, Simon Reed, connections with establishment Los Angeles abound.

Officially blocked Auden turns to her hacking skills. She secures some suspicious information but far from enough to cause a criminal investigation. Auden rightly has ambivalence about her actions. She is breaching the law in her pursuit of justice. The codes of ethics for lawyers forbid breaking the law.

The consequences of her actions lead to violence that drives Auden onto the streets where she connects with her homeless uncle. Trying not to introduce spoilers into this review I will avoid particulars.

Initially I found Auden going to the streets challenging credibility but what happens among the homeless was inventive and proved to be the best part of the book.

Auden comes to appreciate the society of those cast aside by conventional society or overwhelmed by their private demons.

Among the most vivid characters is the “Mayor” who holds a unique form of leadership among the homeless. A child of wealth he finds the homeless suit him better than his family. He dispenses advice and aids the exchange of favors in a culture without money.

When Auden rather condescendingly describes a man as a schizophrenic who would benefit from medication the Mayor replies:

Schizophrenices are drowning in the same ocean that mystics are swimming in,” Floyd said. “Some are enlightened or touched. Some are just stark raving mad. Some are broken. Some were never whole. Some are sojourning here. Some are just passing through.” He paused. “Which are you?”

I found myself swiftly drawn along by Auden’s journey with the homeless as she pursues her investigation. Auden shows an ingenuity and tenacity consistent with her obsessive nature. Tobisman has an apt and evocative phrase for Auden – she is “a truffle pig for evidence”.

The conclusion is a masterly example of a lawyer inexorably presenting proof.

While there is more violence than usual in legal fiction, real blood does not flow in the courtrooms and law offices of the world, I greatly enjoyed Proof.

It is a challenge to write a great fictional lawyer. Grisham has done it best in over 20 books. Tobisman has created a wonderful lawyer in Auden.

I want to read the next in the series. I hope Tobisman tones down the thriller aspects a little,  emphasizes the impressive legal skills of Auden and includes more scenes like the gift of a carved wooden dove in repose or sleep bearing the inscription:

            “The scars are the places where the light comes in.”

2018 Ngaio Marsh Awards

Last year Craig Sisterson, organizer of the Ngaio Marsh Awards, invited me to participate in a clever approach to publicizing the Awards. Bloggers from around the world would write posts about the books and authors up for the Awards in the month leading up to the announcement of the winners. Each day there would be a post on the Facebook page for the Awards - https://www.facebook.com/NgaioMarshAward/

I was glad to be one of the bloggers and read an interesting first novel, Ice Shroud by Gordon Ell.

A few days ago Craig was in contact again. This year I am reading and reviewing Marlborough Man by Alan Carter. My post will be up on my blog and the Awards Facebook page on August 19.

I am in the midst of the book and finding it absorbing.

It is certainly a book that is a distinctly New Zealand story. As an example there was a scene in the book which sent a shiver up my spine. In an effort to get a couple to start answering questions pig’s blood is poured on them and they are threatened with an eel. It is not just an ordinary eel:

Deep in New Zealand’s lakes and along its meandering rivers, lives a monster. The New Zealand longfin eel is the largest freshwater eel on earth. They grow to two metres in length and weigh up to forty kilos. They have leathery skin, embedded with hundreds of tiny scales and monster.

I would have told the interrogator anything he wanted to hear from me.

There is lots of fine crime fiction being written in New Zealand.

The shortlists for this year’s Awards:

Best First Novel

The Floating Basin by Carolyn Hawes

Broken Silence by Helen Vivienne Fletcher (HVF Publishing)

All Our Secrets by Jennifer Lane (Rose Mira Books)

The Sound of Her Voice by Nathan Blackell (Mary Egan Publishing)

Nothing Bad Happens Here by Nikki Crutchley (Oak House Press)

Best Crime Novel

Marlborough Man by Alan Carter (Fremantle Press)

See You in September by Charity Norman (Allen & Unwin)

Tess by Kirsten McDougall (Victoria University Press)

The Sound of Her Voice by Nathan Blackell (Mary Egan Publishing)

A Killer Harvest by Paul Cleave (Upstart Press)

The Hidden Room by Stella Duffy (Virago)

The winners will be announced at WORD Christchurch (August 29 – September 2)

2018 Winner of the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction - Proof

Yesterday the University of Alabama School of Law and the ABA Journal announced that Proof by C.E. Tobisman was the winner of the 2018 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction.

The other books on the shortlist were Exposed by Lisa Scottoline and Testimony by Scott Turow. I have read both of them and have been planning to read Proof but it had not been easy to find a paper copy of the book in Canada. Ironically, the copy of Proof I ordered from the Sleuth of Baker Street bookstore in Toronto arrived today and I started reading Proof tonight.

Following a personal tradition, upon my completion of Proof I will put up a review of the book and then a post on which book from the shortlist I thought deserved to win the Prize.

This year's winning author, Cindy Tobisman, is a newcomer to legal fiction compared to Scottoline and Turow. 

The ABA Journal article states:

      Tobisman is a partner with Greines, Martin, Stein & Richland 
      in Los Angeles, where she practices appellate law. Under the 
      name C.E. Tobisman, she has published two novels, Doubt and 
     Proof, and a comic book series, Inside the Loop.

The news release of the Award from the University of Alabama sets out Tobisman's reaction:

      "I am honored, humbled, and frankly, totally stunned," 
      Tobisman said. "The spirit of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' is the 
      spirit of one person's ability to make the world a little more
      fair. That the selection committee saw that spirit in my book is 
      something that I will treasure forever."

As has been the case in recent years readers of the ABA Journal were invited to help select which book would win by casting their vote at the Journal. The winner of the readers poll was a 5th vote joining the 4 individual judges.

This year the votes were 11.61% for Testimony, 16.42% for Proof and 71.98% for Exposed. I was a little surprised to see such a public landslide for Exposed.

The Prize will be awarded at the Library of Congress duing the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

Congratulations to Cindy and a thank you to the University of Alabama for sending me the news release.

A Book for Maxine in 2018

Margot Kinberg at her blog, Confessions of a Mystery Novelist, and I have been thinking about blogging friend, Maxine Clark, now gone 6 years. For the blog, Petrona Remembered, which was created in memory of Maxine I have joined other bloggers each year in recommending books we have read in the previous year that we would have recommended to Maxine were she still alive.

I chose Bluebird, Bluebird this year primarily because of the uniqueness of the sleuth. I think Maxine would have been fascinated and delighted by Darren Matthews, a classic Texas Ranger, who is African American. He confounds many rural white Texans who profoundly respect the Rangers but retain prejudice against black Americans.

I expect she would also have appreciated Attica Locke's skill in weaving current American race relations into the murder investigation.

I invite you to drop over to Margot's blog where she has a fine post on Petrona Remembered.

She will be putting up this post on Petrona Remembered.

****

(1. – 931.) Bluebird, Bluebird by Attica Locke – After seeing Bluebird, Bluebird on many 2017 lists of best books and enjoying the reading of Black Water Rising I asked Santa for Bluebird, Bluebird and it was under the Christmas tree. I am glad I received the book. It is a wonderful book which has rightly propelled Locke into authorial superstardom.

It is a classic American Western with the lone lawman, Darren Mathews, fighting a powerful criminal gang. Mathews is a big man with a .45 on his hip and a 5 tipped star badge upon his chest riding into Lark, Texas in his Texas sized truck. Among contemporary Western American fictional lawmen I thought of Sheriff Walt Longmire from the series by Craig Johnson.

That the lawman is African American and the gang is the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas brings the old West into the 21^st Century. Too often I find mysteries with a police officer acting on their own not credible but Locke has created a believable plot.

Making Mathews a Texas Ranger cements the iconic Western theme.

His family has deep roots in East Texas. They are a part of the black establishment of the region with a family home still at the center of their lives no matter where they work.

Continuing another Western tradition Mathews has a lovely wife back in Houston who, weary of worrying about her husband riding into danger, has demanded he leave the Rangers or she will leave the marriage.

Mathews thinks of resigning from the Rangers and returning to law school.

Yet he cannot resist the lure of solving a double murder in Lark. Michael Wright, a black man with roots in Texas, but now resident in Chicago, is found dead in a bayou outside Geneva Sweet’s Sweets, a country cafe. He has been brutally beaten. Two days Missy Dale, a young white woman, is found dead in the same bayou behind the same café.

The story veers from the simple blacks and whites of Western lore into the complexity of racial relationships in the 21^st Century of rural Texas.

The black residents know the local white sheriff, in a different American tradition, is looking to arrest one of them for the murder. Little effort will be made to investigate Michael’s death.

Mathews, a man of stubborn integrity, will not abide an investigation looking only for a black killer as resolution.

With the authority given him by his status as a Ranger he probes more deeply into the lives of white folk and black folk. What does not fit evil Southern tradition of exacting vengeance on black men when a white woman is attacked is that the black man was killed before the white woman.

Locke shows the discomfort the white residents have with a black Ranger but equally the respect they have for his badge. The world of race relations is being turned upside down.

I have not even discussed the remarkable characters who fill the book. Just one will suffice to illustrate the superb characterization.

Geneva, almost 70 years old, grieves her husband Joe, murdered 6 years ago. The book opens with her visiting his grave:

Geneva Sweet ran an orange extension cord past Mayva Greenwood, Beloved Wife and Mother, May She Rest with Her Heavenly Father. Late morning sunlight pinpricked through the trees, dotting a constellation of lights on the blanket of pine needles as Geneva’s feet as she snaked the cord between Mayva’s sister and her husband, Leland, Father and Brother in Christ. She gave the cord a good tug, making her way up the modest hill, careful not to step on the graves themselves, only the well-worn grooves between the headstones, which were spaced at haphazard and odd angles, like the teeth of a pauper.

Locke has created a Western lawman for this century in Mathews. I hope Bluebird, Bluebird is the first in a series. I want to read more of his adventures.

The B-Team by Melodie Campbell

(22. – 952.) The B-Team by Melodie Campbell – While in Toronto during the winter I picked up this novella at the Sleuth of Baker Street Store where there was an author event that included Ms. Campbell. I wish I had read the book sooner. It is an entertaining fun read.

It is a long time since I read a novella. Decades ago I often read the novellas or extended short stories featuring Nero Wolfe. It was nice to read again a book in less than an evening. I have come to think of current crime fiction as short fiction if a book is less than 300 pages.

Kitty, the white haired elder and retired burglar from a Hamilton based Italian family whose primary business is crime, puts together the B-Team. Inspired by the A-Team television series of the 1960’s Kitty announces her concept to her puzzled niece, Del:

“Nope. Vigilante group. I talked to your mom. We need one, with all the senior scams these days.” She leaned back in the chair and looked off into the distance with a spooky smile. “I’m thinking of calling it …. The B-Team. And Del, we want you to run it.”

Mom, Stella, is no suburban soccer mommy:

Stella Scarlottis was born on a cold day in January 1952. The men in the family said that ice had formed in her heart the say she was born. I knew different.

It wasn’t ice. It was steel. This is an industrial city, after all. And so, from the very beginning, Stellas has taken no crap. Not from anyone.

Strong women dominate the B-Team. The only male involved is Del’s brother, Dino.

A few months into the venture Del discusses the team:

Our mission is to help the underdog. That is, people who have been on the losing side of a bad deal and will likely suffer greatly because of it. Our most recent cases involved restoring someone’s good name, and preventing a blackmailer from preying on the helpless. Both noble endeavors.

The B-Team will be good vigilantes. In the tradition of Travis McGee they will be the last resort for the defrauded who have no means of legal recovery.

In the spirit of an earlier generation they will commit capers.

The subtitle explains their current caper and recalls an earlier era of subtitles:

            The case of the Angry First Wife.

Kitty calls the team together to recover a diamond necklace. A wealthy man has taken a second trophy wife. The first wife was unable in the divorce to obtain a beautiful necklace she had inherited from her grandmother. The B-Team is dispatched to recover the necklace.

In the tradition of Canadian crime fiction complications ensue but not a trail of bodies.

The strength of the book is in the characters. The members of the B-Team are engaging and memorable. I think they could form an estimable team for a new T.V. series. As I read the book I saw Kitty as a Betty White character.

I hope there will be further books featuring the B-Team. I would like to read more of their capers.