In this sequel to Misdemeanor Man, Dylan Schaffer returns with a mind-bending legal whodunit about small crime, big crime, and the reluctant lawyer caught in the middle.
Despite his recent successes in the courtroom, Gordon Seegerman is intent on sticking to his low-end practice, dealing with misdemeanors for the Santa Rita, California, public defender's office. His priority is his Manilow cover band, which is on the verge of hitting it big-if they can find a substitute for their drummer, whp's nine months pregnant and on bed rest, before a date with Barry in Vegas. But when the cops bust the state's leading high school quarterback for dog-napping and possession of marijuana, and then the dog's owner's wife winds up dead, Gordon finds himself back in the wrong sort of spotlight, and back at work.
And work has never meant so much trouble. The judge has a pathological disregard for the law. The city is on the verge of a violent eruption. And the client looks like he might be the next homicide victim. Forced into the most serious case of his life, Gordon discovers the truth behind a decades-old murder and learns a shocking lesson: he may not be the Misdemeanor Man after all.
A thrilling blend of mystery and Manilow, I Right the Wrongs will have you racing for the final page, singing all the way.
I don't think it's possible to sum up a life as fascinating, dramatic, and exotic as mine in a few paragraphs. This is why I've written an entire book about myself (and my dramatic, fascinating, and exotic, although now deceased father) which will arrive in September 2006. The book is called Life, Death & Bialys: A Father/Son Baking Story, and because it's more than 200 pages long, it will give you a much better sense of me than anything I can do online. I strongly recommend that you buy it. If you still have questions about who I am or what I stand for after you read it (more than once, if possible), then send me an e-mail and I'll answer all your questions.
Still, I have to say something, right? All right, fine. I was born in East Lansing, Michigan. I had no choice in the matter. That is where my parents lived at the time. Had I been asked, I would have preferred Paris, or perhaps Buenos Aires.
My mother wanted to do her psychiatry thing in the New York area, so we left Michigan in the late sixties and went to New Rochelle, a suburb half an hour north of the city, which was a fine place to grow up. Now, more than three decades later, I live in Oakland, California. A very strange and interesting circumstance is that three of my best childhood friends from the close-knit neighborhood where I grew up now live within a few miles of me in California. What does this say about New Rochelle? What does it say about California? I wouldn't dare to opine. I will say that I do not have fond memories of scraping the ice from the windshield of my mother's stationwagon at 7 a.m.
I once wrote a pretty good novel about growing up in New Rochelle, but I couldn't sell it. If you'd like to read it, send me a request at dylan@dylanschaffer.com and I'll reply with the file. It's called The Kickball War, and if it had been published, I imagine at least one review would have called it A hilarious and touching portrait of seventies suburbia through the eyes of a kid on the verge of becoming a neurotic mess. Not that the book has anything to do with me, of course.
For most of the past 15 years I've been practicing criminal appellate law in the Bay Area. I've represented hundreds of defendants in all manner of post-trial proceedings, from drunk driving cases to multiple murders. I have never tried a case. I represent the convicted'in other words, everyone who calls my office has been found guilty by a jury and sentenced, usually for long periods, to state or federal prison.
(For a sampling of the cases I've worked on, go to http://dylanschaffer.com/legal_work.htm )
Now, along with my day job, I write books, as well as notes to my wife explaining why my income has dropped so drastically in the past few years. My first, book, which I still think was a masterpiece, was Dog Stories (Chronicle Books, 1997), in which dogs declaimed about the foibles of their masters; the text accompanies terrific photographs by the genius graphics man, Jon Weber.
Then I wrote a couple novels, including the aforementioned Kickball War, and my agent said, "I can't sell these; please get me something I can sell." So I wrote the first of the Misdemeanor Man book, and the very good folks at Bloomsbury bought it, as well as the sequel.
And then I decided to take a break and write about a subject upon which I am the world's expert, that is, Dylan Schaffer. Which brings me back to my new book--Life, Death & Bialys: A Father/Son Baking Story. You can find much more information about the new book in my blog, which I call my GLOB at www.dylanschaffer.com.
This review is from: I Right the Wrongs: A Novel (Hardcover)
Gordon Seegerman, the underachieving public defender in mythical Santa Rita, California (it's really Oakland), continues to want to lay low and spend as much time as possible preparing his Barry Manilow cover band for its next performance - in Las Vegas, for Barry himself. But, as in the wonderful "Misdemeanor Man", events conspire against Gordon and his lack of ambition.
Marcus Manners, the local high school athletic hero, is arrested for stealing a rival team's mascot. The fact that there's a little mysterious pot in the car shouldn't cause too much trouble in this basic `misdo' case. But Gordon draws an insane judge. The illumni of the rival school, many of whom are involved in the local legal system, are not interested in letting things slide. And then the wife of the mascot's owner is killed. Thus, Gordon is thrust again into the spotlight - much against his will.
Dylan Schaffer has written another marvelous story; not only is it chock-full of sly, acerbic humor, there's a deftly plotted mystery. It would be a mistake to think of this book as simply a funny legal mystery - while there's humor aplenty, Schaffer touches on a number of darker issues as well: racism; corruption, and the difficulty of dealing with ageing family.
This is a terrific second novel - I hope there are many more Gordon Seegerman stories to come....
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
This review is from: I Right the Wrongs: A Novel (Hardcover)
I really enjoyed reading this book. I read in bed at night before going to sleep and my fiancee kept looking at me sideways as I laughed out loud. The plot is good, the writing is clever and the characters are totally believable. Seegerman is a great protagonist and his hilarious quips alone are worth the price of the book!
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
This review is from: I Right the Wrongs: A Novel (Hardcover)
What can I tell you? Same cast of characters, same extremely cool writing. This guy has me hooked. He didn't use quite as much humor in this book as in its predecessor, because it wouldn't have been appropriate for the story and perhaps because he's mirroring reality yet again.
Do you know what's difficult about writing mysteries? You have to put clues out in the open where the reader can see them, along with perhaps a few red herrings, but ideally the reader won't realize what he's seen and what the solution is until you tell him. Then he said "Ah ha!" and "Of course!" and you admire the author for making you feel a little bit silly.
Schaffer's hit upon a solution to the dilemma. As you read, you don't always know where the clues are. His subplots are not window dressing, they're not an afterthought, and they're not filler. Life's not as simple as figuring out whodunnit, lots of things are happening to the protagonist at once, and every scene can also be attributed to character development. The typical mystery author's focused, as is the reader. Schaffer is focused as well, but on a number of things simultaneously. It makes him extremely readable. But now I have to wait while he writes the third installment. Damn. I hate waiting.
{March 2006 Update - The author sent me an email because of these reviews. Is that cool or what? It'll be a long wait, because he's writing other stuff instead. Fine by me. As long as he's writing, I'm a happy reader. His site, in case you care, is at [...]}
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
