This is a tale of celebrity and murder – the victim is O’Mally Ransom, the most famous writer in America. And the murderer is apparently Mary Carelli, a television journalist. But things are not necessarily what they seem (are they ever in a legal thriller?). It’s not surprising Carelli is the prime suspect, because she admits she did it! – but what of the circumstances of the murder? Was it self-defence, as Carelli maintains, or is there forensic evidence that tells a different story? Certainly she has the bruises that are consistent with her story – she says the victim was trying to rape her. But why aren’t there powder marks on the victim’s hands and chest? Why is the statement of a witness different on one important point? Was she naked before the rape was alleged to have occurred? What about the crime scene? Good questions all! And it starts you wondering about Carelli – especially about the times she chooses to tell the truth. Into the breach rides Mr Christopher Paget, a truly gifted trial lawyer who once profited mightily from Carelli’s assistance – in other words, he owes her big time. The other insight for the lay reader is that Paget tries to get the prosecution’s case thrown out in the preliminary hearing stage. And do the defendant and her lawyer share more than the reader initially realises? This will explain the "degree of guilt" that Paget feels because of his past entanglement with Carelli. It’s a nice twist on the formula to have the defendant admit to the crime but have the circumstances of that confession challenged by other evidence. And any time we delve into the world of forensic investigation, as long as it's professionally handled, it piques our interest (hence the wild popularity of books by Patricia Cornwall, who does her homework). This book is at its best in the courtroom. Mr Patterson understands how to take the reader into this rarefied atmosphere, where to place the emphasis, and what’s worth explaining. Courts have their own internal rhythms, and sometimes Patterson makes you feel its heartbeat. It takes a fair while for us to get to the meat of the plot, which really takes place in the courtroom. Before then there is a lot of character development and a series of flashbacks, always a dicey literary manoeuvre that should only be attempted by real professionals. Sometimes it doesn’t illuminate the past (the point of a flashback) but confuses the present. At times the author seems to want to be more than a thriller writer – that’s fine, as long as it doesn’t interfere with the very thing readers of legal thrillers want, otherwise these writers should turn their hands to a different genre! And a personal note from a couple of the readers here at Law in the Lounge – they didn’t like the character who’s murdered, and they weren’t too sorry to see a bullet between his eyes! How often does an alibi come undone because of forensic evidence? And what is this "forensic evidence" they talk of in books and movies? How did the crime scene investigators realise there was something fishy in Carelli’s story? "Forensic" is easily enough defined: it means something to do with courts, usually something that is defined by its use in the courts. Here we’ll concentrate on the contribution that forensic evidence can make in unravelling the clues at the scene of the crime. This sort of thing probably started centuries ago with coronial hearings – looking into the death of a person under English law by a coroner, and the development of the autopsy. What can you tell from a crime scene? Usually the scientific investigators want to see the body, at the scene of the crime, before it is disturbed. This is why you always see a photographer at the crime scene in the movies or on television. Everything of interest is put in plastic bags so it can be scrutinised later in a scientific laboratory, or a number of them. The whole idea, of course, is to try to find out how the crime was committed when you weren’t there. This is called "crime scene reconstruction". Nothing comes easily in this type of work – it is painstaking, even boring, and rarely open to premature conclusions. There are many questions an investigator must ask that are seemingly insignificant – "Degree of Guilt" highlights this fact. For instance, was the room light on or off when the body was discovered? Were the curtains opened or closed (there’s a clue for you!). Not only are we interested in what is there, but also what should be there, for example, a wallet or car keys. Virtually anything at the crime scene might be important. Nowadays Richard North Patterson has to be included in an exclusive list of best selling legal thriller writers, along with John Grisham and Scott Turow. Like those luminaries, he too was a practising lawyer, a partner in a San Francisco corporate law firm. He doesn’t believe he could have been a writer had it not been for his real life legal experience. He says the skills of a trial lawyer are also the skills of a storyteller – those of us at Law in the Lounge who have court room experience have heard plenty of yarns in our time! Patterson was born in Berkeley, California, in 1947, and graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University and the Case Western Reserve School of Law. He did not start at the top – he was an Ohio assistant attorney general, before going to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Those of you who have read his first novel, The Lasko Tangent, will recognise the latter experience as the source for much of that story. That book won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best first suspense novel of 1979. He scratched his writing itch at the University of Alabama in the late 1970s, and wrote three more novels whilst working as a lawyer. But then he stopped writing for about 8 years, after which he wrote "Degree of Guilt" in about three months (we’re jealous!). Now he is on the top rung of best sellers – to those of us at Law in the Lounge still toiling at the law, this seems enticing indeed. It takes a while for "Degree of Guilt" to bite, but once it does we defy you to put it down. And it is really pleasing that the best part of this absorbing novel takes place in the courtroom, where the action should lie in any decent legal thriller. Unfortunately there's too much of the rest – this novel is too long! It’s the modern disease, and it afflicts many a movie as well. Why are publishers obsessed with fat novels? This one could have used some judicious pruning.
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