A Cinderella Affidavit by Michael Fredrickson | LibraryThing

I really liked this book.  Some reviewers have complained about the number of characters, but the book is more than a “Dick and Jane” compendium of the day’s events.  It’s a complicated story that reveals the inner workings of a law firm in addition to being a fine legal drama and mystery.  Definitely my cup of lemonade. (I don't like tea.)

A Cinderella Affidavit is one developed by narcotics officers to obtain a search warrant that isn’t exactly kosher.  It is based on the cop’s gut feeling about a house or location but may not have a snitch’s information required by a judge. Normally this wouldn’t matter, since the bad guy is caught holding the drugs which are then evidence used at trial, but since Francis Dunleavy, the cop trying to break down the door got killed, the snitch’s presence in court becomes truly important since the affidavit had described, in detail, the person who was supposed to be in the apartment at the time when Dunleavy was killed. Unfortunately the snitch in this case existed, but had made up much of the information.

The opening courtroom seen, taking some depositions, is really quite humorous.  It follows the open-ended battering down of a drug dealer’s den where a Dunlevy is shot. Michael Chen is accused of shooting the policeman through the door.  His lawyer, Sarah, files an appeal, asking for the name of the informant who the affidavit said had given police the information about when the drugs would be in the apartment. Her client doesn’t match the description given by the informant and calling him could provide exculpatory testimony. The state, naturally doesn’t want to reveal the name of the CI.  Turns out the affidavit written by the Lieutenant, a boozer just barely holding it together, had cited this particular snitch (known as IT)  in a whole daisy chain of affidavits that threaten to bring down a raft of cases.  Danny, the IT in this case, had not been Lieutenant Carvello’s snitch, but rather the dead cop’s and he is linked to the Chinatown mob that makes it imperative he not appear in court for any reason.

Matthew is Danny’s lawyer.  It so happens that Danny is IT.  What’s interesting about Matthew is that as tenacious as he is in tracking down the perpetrators (I’m trying to avoid some spoilers here) he commits multiple ethical violations and does some really stupid things. Frankly, it’s a wonder his mentor at the firm stood by him as long as he did, not to mention his girlfriend.  (An interesting aside is that the author of the book was disciplined for some ethical violations himself in his position -- irony of ironies - as general counsel to the Massachusetts Board of Overseers.)

For me, a good legal drama has to have excellent repartee  in the courtroom between the two sides (perhaps that’s why I enjoy listening to Supreme Court oral arguments.)  This book has that along with a nice touch of humor. The plot itself becomes a bit strained, but never mind. It was extremely well narrated by  Ron McLarty, one of my favorites.

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The Linux Mint Beginner's Guide by Jonathan Moeller | LibraryThing

I've been fooling around with several (10+) different Linux distros and I really like Linux.  I have pretty much settled on about six different distros that I have set up as dual boots (often with more than one distro in addition to Windows) on several laptops I've fixed up. Mint is one of the best, and I thought this book would be useful in filling in some gaps.  It's a bit elementary for me, but would be excellent for someone just jumping in with little technical experience.

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Three by Julie Hilden | LibraryThing

I have always wondered when reading a book that indulges in some sexual gymnastics or kink or whatever, just how much the author separates him or herself from the contents. Is the activity something they have experienced, always wanted to, frowned upon?

So when I saw this book mentioned on Julie Hilden’s bio on her column at http://verdict.justia.com/, a very interested blog related to court decisions, my eyebrows shot up and I had to scrape them off the ceiling.  Hilden graduated from Harvard and Yale Law School and also holds an MFA in creative writing so the writing is quite competent.  She writes frequently on First Amendment issues and I have enjoyed her columns.

I don’t know what to make of her book, however. It’s about a wife who marries Ilan with the understanding up front they will engage in threesomes. Following their marriage her obsession with him leads to all sorts of self-destructive behavior.  This not the kind of book I usually read, nor like to read, and nothing in this book made it more appealing.  I don’t enjoy reading about self destructive behavior; sex with guns and razor blades has no appeal at all and frankly, if I had my druthers, Ilan would be locked up.  My wife is sensible enough that if I pulled a stunt like that she’d pull a Lorena Bobbitt.  Billed as erotica; it’s not.

Hilden has also written a memoir (a Bad Daughter) which apparently details some of her less fortunate romantic choices. I wish this book had left me with a clearer picture of what a woman should not do, given the outcomes here. Her romantic adulation of Ilan struck me as bizarre.  I’m no prude and would willingly indulge in all sorts of fantasies (well when I was younger perhaps, now I’m just happy to be able to tie my shoelaces and those velcro ones look appealing) but nothing that involved razor blades.  On the other hand, I learned from a description of her memoir that Hilden carries the same gene that led her mother to develop early-onset Alzheimer’s.

But, maybe it’s just the rush to indulge in writing about S&M given the meteoric rise of Shades. I have no idea how to rate this book.  Writing is good (4), content is totally unappealing (1). It would be a very interesting book to discuss with the author, however, so I guess a (3).

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Robert B. Parker's Blind Spot (A Jesse Stone Novel) by Reed Farrel Coleman | LibraryThing

Of all Robert Parker’s creations I like the Jesse Stone series the best.  A couple of authors have attempted to continue the series, including Michael Brandman and now Reed Farrel Coleman, author of the Moe Prager series. I haven’t tried that series but will.  I know some people disagree, but I think Coleman has better captured Jesse than Brandman.  The interaction between Molly and Jesse is spot on.

We get a little more back story on what happened to Jesse in the minor leagues as he agrees to go to NY for a reunion with his old teammates at the invitation of Vic, the player who stole Kayla, Jesse’s girlfriend following his injury. Seems Vic needs Jesse’s help on a matter, but before he can reveal what it might be, Jesse has to return to Paradise where a girl has been murdered;  one that involves Vic (perhaps a bit too coincidentally.)  And the girl Vic had brought along as “entertainment” for Jesse turns out to be -- well, you’ll just have to read the book to find out.  

The only thing I didn’t like much was the last couple of paragraphs.  That kind of open-ended contrivance seems trite.

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DUE DILIGENCE (Rachel Gold Mystery) by Michael Kahn | LibraryThing

“Due diligence. Utter that dull gray phrase around a pack of corporate lawyers and watch them leer. That’s because the final tab for the due diligence in a significant transaction will easily exceed ten million dollars. Those kinds of numbers enchant even the most somber of practitioners.”

The plot revolves around an accountant who was doing due diligence on a company before a merger could take place.  Rachel had received a call from him explaining he needed her advice on some details of the merger.  When his body is found in the basement having gone through a trash compactor, Rachel is hired to help clean up some of the affairs and discovers an intricate web of deceit and malfeasance.  Soon her investigation leads to a presidential candidate and what he might have done many decades earlier and whether doing something that might benefit millions of people but leads to the deaths of some elderly patients might be ethically suspect.

Each of Kahn’s books takes a legal issue and builds a plot around it. There’s usually some kind of list with obscure combinations of letters and numbers Rachel must decipher. While the details of the characters appear repetitive from one book to the next, I didn’t find that as disconcerting as have some readers.  

Some interesting history of trademarks. I knew little of their origin and raison d’etre. “During medieval times, trademarks became a symbol of responsibility as the powerful guilds of Europe required their members to each use a unique mark. That way a defective product could be traced back to its maker. A trademark was thus the highly personal symbol of a single worker: when his life ended, so did his trademark. By the middle of the twentieth century, however, it had metamorphosed into the multibillion dollar world of brand-name marketing—a world where a single word, such as Xerox or Corvette or Chanel or Kodak, can be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Not to mention that St. Louis became home to many brands of beers because it’s built over the top of hundreds of limestone caves.  I just had to check out whether all this was a figment of Kahn’s imagination.  It is not and the caves play a central role in the solution to the puzzle. Note that claustrophobic activities appear in other of Kahn’s novels.  (http://books.google.com/books?id=A-qxHKZcF_AC&pg=PR6&dq=st.+louis+caves&hl=en&sa=X&ei=_mNCVKejOs3-yQSCyYCQCg&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=st.%20louis%20caves&f=false)

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