{"id":990,"date":"2013-04-30T18:44:01","date_gmt":"2013-05-01T00:44:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=990"},"modified":"2014-05-31T17:26:45","modified_gmt":"2014-05-31T23:26:45","slug":"adam-mitzner-a-case-of-redemption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/adam-mitzner-a-case-of-redemption\/","title":{"rendered":"Adam Mitzner: A Case of Redemption"},"content":{"rendered":"

While there are many, many legal thrillers out there, there are few of them that I personally enjoy.\u00a0 I am<\/em> a big fan of David Ellis, as well as a sometime fan of Scott Turow, Linda Fairstein and Lisa Scottoline, and now I can add to that short list Adam Mitzner.\u00a0 This is apparently his second novel, though, like Ellis, he doesn\u2019t write a series.\u00a0 Like many other writers of legal thrillers, he is also an attorney.\u00a0 The legal backdrop, to this non-attorney, seems very authentic.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Taking a plausibly ripped from the headlines storyline, the novel centers on murder charges against a rapper whose stage name is Legally Dead.\u00a0 His back story is that he was shot four times and left for dead, thus the name.\u00a0 L.D. (as he\u2019s called by his friends) is in prison for clubbing his girlfriend, a famous singer (think Beyonce or Rihanna type famous) named Roxanne. \u00a0 The thing that seems to clinch his guilt is the fact that one of his songs \u2013 now getting constant airplay \u2013 discusses killing a singer with a baseball bat.\u00a0 As a final nail in his coffin, it was written before Roxanne\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n

Enter our hero attorney, Dan Sorenson.\u00a0 Like many a David Ellis hero, Sorenson is damaged goods.\u00a0 He\u2019s recently lost his wife and daughter in a car accident and has been in hibernation, comforted mainly by a bottle of scotch.\u00a0 He comes out of it only when asked to take L.D.\u2019s case by another lawyer, Nina, who believes in L.D.\u2019s innocence.<\/p>\n

Dan isn\u2019t buying the innocence bit but he agrees to meet with L.D. He\u2019s feeling guilty about another client he got off,\u00a0 as well as the way he neglected his wife and daughter by working all the time.\u00a0 In short, he\u2019s looking for some karmic atonement and when he meets L.D. he thinks maybe he\u2019s found it.\u00a0 For some reason he, like Nina, is convinced of L.D.\u2019s innocence and before he knows it he\u2019s all in.\u00a0 He and Nina set up shop in his apartment and go to town as best they can.<\/p>\n

There are some givens in legal thrillers.\u00a0 One is the unaccommodating \u2013 to the point of unfair \u2013 Judge.\u00a0 One is the surprising background fact about the client.\u00a0 One is the scruffy expert witness who supplies a vital clue. One is that the main character lawyer is in disgrace and working without the support of a large firm.\u00a0 All of these tropes are present here, but the sting, as they say, is in the tail, and the ending of the story doesn\u2019t disappoint.<\/p>\n

The legal scrambling is completely believable, as is the portrayal of the former white shoe firm where Dan worked before the accident.\u00a0 The trial \u2013 the obvious denouement \u2013 is saved for the end.\u00a0 Like a good true crime book, a good legal thriller doesn\u2019t need to spend too much time in the courtroom.<\/p>\n

Mitzner is a good, page turning story teller.\u00a0 Like another favorite popcorn thriller writer of mine, Michael Palmer, Mitztner has the narrative goods.\u00a0 He has a good story to tell and he delivers, with a good number of unexpected twists.\u00a0 I liked the main character.\u00a0 I liked that he was looking for karmic justice.\u00a0 And I like that the author\u00a0 leaves it up to the reader to decide whether it\u2019s been found or not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While there are many, many legal thrillers out there, there are few of them that I personally enjoy.\u00a0 I am a big fan of David Ellis, as well as a sometime fan of Scott Turow, Linda Fairstein and Lisa Scottoline, and now I can add to that short list Adam Mitzner.\u00a0 This is apparently his … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-legal-thriller"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=990"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1373,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/990\/revisions\/1373"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}