To Speak for the Dead [Hardcover]

Paul Levine (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1990

A doctor in love with his patient’s wife...
A fatal mistake during surgery...
Accident? Malpractice? Or murder?

Defending a surgeon in a malpractice case, Jake Lassiter begins to suspect that his client is innocent of negligence...but guilty of murder. Add a sexy widow, a deadly drug, and a grave robbery to the stew, and you have the recipe for Miami’s trial of the century.

“TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD” introduced the world to Jake Lassiter, the linebacker-turned-lawyer with a hard bark and a tender heart. An international bestseller, Paul Levine’s debut novel was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the best mysteries of the year.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Attorney Levine's lively fiction debut introduces Jake Lassiter, ex-jock turned Miami trial lawyer. Jake defends Dr. Roger Salisbury in a civil malpractice suit brought by gorgeous young Melanie Corrigan, widow of wealthy developer Philip Corrigan. The dead man's daughter, sportswriter Susan Corrigan, is not happy with Roger's acquittal, and tells Jake that Melanie conspired with his client to murder her father, using the lawsuit to divert attention from their relationship. As Jake considers Susan's suspicions, the widow makes a new accusation (while nearly naked), incriminating Roger but letting herself off the hook. Needing tangible proof, Jake and his friend Charlie Riggs, a retired coroner, and Susan clandestinely exhume Philip's body and, after foraging in the dark amid concrete tombs, sneak off with not one body but two. The grave theft alerts the city prosecutor to new clues, and he arrests Roger for murder, leaving Jake in the middle of a baffling whodunit. Levine spins his tale briskly, his use of medical evidence and legal argument heightening the excitement rather than weighing it down. Two more Jake Lassiter novels are to follow; that's good news.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Dr. Roger Salisbury knew seductive, beautiful Melanie Corrigan way back when she was a nude dancer in a seedy Miami bar. Now she's accused him of malpractice in the death of her wealthy husband, and, when that fails, she frames him for murder. As he hunts for the real murderer, narrator Jake Lassiter--Salisbury's sympathetic, witty, and nonconformist lawyer--falls for the dead man's attractive daughter, enlists the aid of a brainy ex-medical examiner, and narrowly escapes death himself. A finely tuned plot from first novelist Levine, who orchestrates his tense courtroom and medical scenes with expert panache, fluid prose, and sly humor. An excellent choice and the first in a series.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 282 pages
• Publisher: Bantam; First Edition edition (July 1, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553057472
• ISBN-13: 978-0553057478
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 5.9 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,304,790 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

PAUL LEVINE worked as a newspaper reporter, a law professor and a trial lawyer before becoming a full-time novelist. Obviously, he cannot hold a job. Paul claims that writing fiction comes naturally: he told whoppers for many years in his legal briefs. His books have been translated into 23 languages, none of which he can read.

He has won the John D. MacDonald fiction award and has been nominated for an Edgar, a Macavity, the International Thriller Writers Award, and the James Thurber Humor Prize.

What's new? Now on Amazon Kindle at $2.99: The 20th Anniversary edition of "To Speak for the Dead," the first of the bestselling Jake Lassiter novels. All author proceeds of the novel are pledged to the Four Diamonds Fund, which supports cancer treatment and research at Penn State Hershey Children's Hospital.

Writing in USA TODAY, Larry King called the Lassiter series, "Mystery writing at its very, very best."

To Speak for the Dead
Night Vision
False Dawn
Mortal Sin
Riptide
Fool Me Twice
Flesh & Bones

A Miami Dolphins linebacker turned hard-nosed lawyer, Lassiter has been described by Booklist as "one of the most entertaining series characters in contemporary crime fiction" and by The Miami Herald as having "a lot more charisma than Perry Mason ever did."

Also now available on Kindle, "Impact," a legal thriller set at the Supreme Court; "Ballistic," in which a homegrown terrorist group takes over a missile silo in Wyoming; and "The Road to Hell," four original short stories.

Paul's other work includes the "Solomon and Lord" series, featuring mismatched Miami lawyers Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord:

Solomon vs. Lord
The Deep Blue Alibi
Kill All the Lawyers
Trial & Error

"Fans of Carl Hiaasen and Dave Barry will enjoy this humorous Florida crime romp," Publishers Weekly wrote of "Solomon vs. Lord."

Paul also wrote "Illegal," a thriller set in the world of human trafficking on the Mexican border. His next novel will be "Lassiter," due in hardcover from Bantam in September 2011.

Paul wrote 20 episodes of the TV series JAG, which gave him an opportunity to steer a nuclear submarine and land on the deck of an aircraft carrier, all without endangering national security. He is a graduate of Penn State University where he majored in journalism and the University of Miami Law School where he majored in the swimming pool. He passed the Florida Bar exam in his first try in what he suspects was a computer glitch.

He was a trial lawyer with the mammoth international law firm of Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he did not even pretend to know all his partners' names. He specialized in "complex litigation," cases so abstruse that even lawyers charging 500 bucks an hour didn't fully understand them. He tried hundreds of cases and handled appeals at every level, including the Supreme Court. Along the way, he filed expense accounts nearly as creative as his legal briefs.

Paul says he enjoys writing more than lawyering because he no longer keeps time sheets and gets to work in his underwear. He lives in the hills of Southern California, which he claims are populated by rattlesnakes and coyotes, and those are just the Hollywood agents.

More info at http:www.paul-levine.com

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Better than Grisham!, June 20, 2010

By 

Shelley Brewster "Lady Trial Lawyer" (Palm Beach, FL) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD (The Jake Lassiter Series) (Kindle Edition)

I read John Grisham, Scott Turow, Steve Martini, Lisa Scottoline, Linda Fairstein and other writers of legal thrillers. I'm also a lawyer, so I'm a stickler for authenticity. TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD is maybe my favorite courtroom novel of all time. It combines suspense with humor and the trial scenes are on-the-money. Jake Lassiter is real to me because he's not a goody-two-shoes lawyer. He's flawed but tough and he'll do anything, including rob a grave, to get evidence. If I'm ever accused of murder, I'm going to hire Lassiter. I've also read the sequel, NIGHT VISION, which delves deeper into Lassiter's past and involves a serial killer on the Internet. Highly recommended, too.NIGHT VISION (The Jake Lassiter Series)

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Why Does A Hearse Horse Snicker Hauling A Lawyer Away?, July 10, 2005

By 

J. H. Minde "Everything I need is right here" (Boca Raton, Florida and Brooklyn, New York) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: To Speak for the Dead (Hardcover)

TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD is the first of Miami lawyer-turned-novelist Paul Levine's Jake Lassiter novels, and it acquits itself well as an initial effort.

Levine knows his landscape as well as fellow Floridians John D. MacDonald or Carl Hiaasen, and his characters are at least as well developed and colorful. In TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD we are introduced to former second-string Miami Dolphin-turned-slightly stumbling attorney Jake Lassiter, his irrepressible moonshine sippin' Granny Lassiter, and his best friend, the Latin-spouting retired ME, Dr. Charlie Riggs.

Very much a working lawyer, the self-deprecating Jake is usually quicker with his wisecracks than with his appellate arguments, but he somehow manages to be smarter than the people around him expect him to be, nonetheless.

Lassiter's failing is idealism---he firmly believes people to be better than they are---and he struggles to discover what more cynical, jaded human beings might assume from the outset.

Jake's recent client, Dr. Roger Salisbury has just been cleared of malpractice in the death of multimillionaire Miami developer Philip Corrigan, age sixtyish. No sooner has Salisbury walked out of the civil courtroom than Corrigan's twentysomething widow, Melanie Corrigan (aka ex-exotic dancer Autumn Rain) accuses him of murder.

As it turns out, Dr. Salisbury and the grieving widow have a sloppily kept secret "history." So...Is it murder? Is it conspiracy? Is it an accident...Is it revenge...? And why is Jake wearing one brown loafer and one cordovan?

As light reading goes, this one is a page-turner, though with the low-key feel of a summer dusk at Longboat Key.

Highly recommended fun!

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just as Good!, July 12, 2010

By 

Deborah G. Levinson - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD (The Jake Lassiter Series) (Kindle Edition)

Just as good the second (or is it the third or fourth?) time around as when I first read this book, discovering both Jake Lassiter and Paul Levine at the same time. Breezy writing, and a fun character, surrounded by a more than decent plot. I loved it then, and gobbled up everything by Levine after that, and I'm glad I took the time to buy and read again for a good cause. (Funny story - discovered Levine because I was looking to see whether Levinson [,Robert S.] was on the shelf of a then local bookstore.