The #1 Lawyer Features a Flawed Hero, And That’s What Makes It Great
Sometimes, you need a lawyer. And sometimes, you want to read about one.
Fresh off my first political thriller in many a year (as reviewed last week), I wanted to dive into a legal thriller. Probably stemmed from my enjoyment of the Apple TV version of Scott Turrow’s “Presumed Innocent” but the book I selected was part of the original group of books at a local grocery store. And, yeah, it’s another James Patterson book.
The #1 Lawyer by James Patterson and Nancy Allen was published earlier this year so it’s still in hardback. It’s also in audio which is how I consumed this story. Kevin Stillwell does a great job at narrating the exploits of Stafford Lee Penney, trial lawyer from Biloxi, Mississippi. Now, the best thing Stillwell does is not affect a deep Southern drawl. But he’s got just enough of an affect that you never forget where this story takes place.
Stafford Lee (you know he’s from the South when he goes by two names) is, well, the #1 trial lawyer in southern Mississippi. He’s never lost a case. And the case we get from the start is a doozy. Doctor Daniel Caro is accused of murdering a patient, one in which he was intimately involved. Author Nancy Allen is an attorney herself and the nuances of trying this case were fully fleshed out. The entire first act of the book is the Caro case, and it was enthralling. It was exactly what I was looking for. In fact, all of Act I, the portion of the book devoted to the Caro case, could have been its own novel.
But it’s the major twists that keep coming that make this book enjoyable. And I use twists in the plural. It’s not a spoiler—it’s right there on the cover—to say that Stafford Lee becomes himself a suspect in a murder. But you’ll never guess who or why until the very end.
A Flawed Lead Character
In a decent amount of the stories I consume—including books, TV, and movies—the lead characters don’t get hurt too much. Maybe that’s some sort of internal thing in my head steering my decisions a certain way or maybe the kinds of stories I like involve likable lead characters who don’t often suffer. Stafford Lee is likable—even when he stumbles—but it’s his vulnerabilities that really drew me in.
He’s an excellent attorney, and we see that in Act I. And you kind of think he’ll just skate through to the end of the book. But the subsequent events hurt him and he finds himself not knowing what to do. The deeper he gets, the more things are just piled on top of him and you don’t really know how he’s going to get out of his predicament. And he’s stubborn so that doesn’t help. There are multiple times when I wanted him to just shut up and let someone help him, but no. He’s got to do things his way.
He emerges from the story not unscathed, but he has grown. That makes for a very satisfying ending.