About time somebody took on Texas for a murder mystery venue. I enjoyed this, seemed slowish at times - but I guess I have gotten conditioned to cop action and this was lawyer not so much action. He did get beaten up, but since he had stirred up the cartels and the mob and sundry local bad guys it seemed inevitable.
The setting was Galveston although the guy is actually based in the Dallas area. I never knew that Galveston is actually an island. I have heard "Galveston island" but always assumed that it was one of those coastal islands that was off Galveston. Nope - the city itself is on the island. Seems like lunacy to me, my father worked for the Corps of Engineers out of New Orleans and I know that all those gulf islands get scrubbed down to the sand by hurricanes periodically. Seems a lot like building a subdivision in the arroyo that runs through the middle of town - except that builder sold them to flatland furriners who didn't know any better, and on those gulf islands the same fools come back and rebuild time after time after time ... .
The hero, Atticus Scott Fenney, addressed by his eleven-year-old daughter, Boo, as "A. Scott," is a lawyer and a total good guy - almost too good. His wife walked out and left him - and Boo. He won a high-profile murder case for a black prostitute who promptly died of an overdose - so he adopted her eleven-year-old daughter, Pajamae. (That name has got to be for real somewhere - couldn't make that up.) He walked out of a partnership in a major law firm because he was fed up with making money for people who already had too much money. Now he has taken his daughters and the rest of his crew to Galveston to defend his ex-wife who is charged with the murder of her lover, a professional golfer. Maybe it is the name; Atticus Finch is the prototype good lawyer. I wonder if the mothers of the two infants that I know named Atticus are trying to program their sons to be lawyers.
The future of the whole bunch of them hangs on the outcome of this trial. His practice is not making enough to support them. And he has two offers hanging - one is a return to his old law firm with a corner office and a cool million a year, the other is a seat on the federal bench at a much more modest salary - although more than I would make in about ten years. Guess which one he wants - and stands to lose if he loses the case.
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