Reviewer: Rowena The Good Lawyer by Thomas Benigno
Publisher: Landview Books
Publication Date: March 14th 2012
Genres: Fiction
Pages: 322
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INSPIRED BY A TRUE STORY. A young, ambitious lawyer is eager to prove he is better than the father who abandoned him and worthy of the devoted mother who raised him beyond the siren call of the mobster dominated family he grew up in. Working as a Bronx Legal Aid Attorney he learns how to twist the system, how to become an unbeatable defense lawyer, and he his peacock proud of his perfect record-not a single conviction. But it's 1982. The Spiderman rapist is on the loose and New York City is a city in fear. When an outraged rape victim commits suicide right before his eyes, searching for absolution, he grabs the headline case of a teacher's aide accused of molesting three students. Armed with a firm belief in his client's innocence, he knocks the pegs out from under the prosecution's case. When one of the children turns up dead, he discovers that his client may be strangely connected to the Spiderman. Digging deeper, horrifying revelations about his family's past collide with the true identity of the sadistic sociopath behind the Spiderman's rampage. In the process, this good lawyer comes face-to-face with his greatest conflict and deepest fear: to win, really win-save the city and even the woman he loves-must he sacrifice every principle he believes in and embrace his family's mafia past to become judge, jury, and executioner?
I read this book for my offline book club last month and my friend who chose the book had already finished the book before I even bought it and said it was so good so I had such high hopes. It’s not my usual kind of book but isn’t that what book clubs are for? To introduce you to books that you wouldn’t normally read? So when I finally bought the book and settled in to get the story read, it took me…forever to read this book.
I’m a sucker for character development. If you have a prayer of making me fall for your book then you’d better get me to like your main character. Hell, any character would do it for me. Unfortunately, the main character in this book just didn’t cut it for me. I’m used to reading romance novels where the writing is emotional and the events that happen either slowly unfold or happen so fast that you feel like you were slapped in the face but either way, you feel something. The entire time that I was reading this book, I couldn’t connect with the suit, Nick Mancini.
Nick is a lawyer who has seen some pretty interesting characters in his life. He’s defended people that were innocent and people who weren’t innocent. It’s his job to defend those that don’t have a defense and his latest case involves a man who is accused of molesting three little boys. The guy is a teacher’s aide with a stand up reputation and no record, at all. He’s a model citizen but things aren’t adding up to Nick. So Nick starts an investigation into the case and his gut is telling him that something isn’t right about the whole thing. Meanwhile, there’s a rapist on the loose that people are calling Spiderman. He climbs into women’s windows and has his way with them before he leaves. The way that he climbs into these windows is he comes in through the roof, Spiderman style…but that’s a completely different case.
It took me for.ever. to read this book. The beginning was so slow that by the time I got to page 150 in the book, I put it down for good. I couldn’t get into the way that this story is told. It was very dry. Without emotion. I couldn’t connect with Nick. I couldn’t connect with the story and trying to keep on reading became a chore so I DNF’d it. Talking about it with the members of my book club that did finish the book was much more interesting than actually reading it. Finding out what happened was fun, but not enough for me to go back and finish it.
Of what I did read, my grade is: 2 out of 5.
This book is available from Landview Books. You can buy it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher for an honest review.