Brain Storm
A Novel
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- 59,00 kr
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- 59,00 kr
Publisher Description
Attorney Joe Watson had never been to court except to be sworn in. He did legal research, investigating copyright infringement in video games (addressing such matters as: Did CarnageMaster plagiarize their beheading sequence from Greek SlaughterHouse?).
He was a Webhead, a cybernerd doing support work for the lawyers in his firm who did go to court. And he was good at it. He was on track to become one of the youngest partners in the firm, and he was able--by a hair--to support his wife and children in an affluent neighborhood. Then he got notice that the tyrannical Judge Whittaker J. Stang had appointed him to defend James Whitlow, a small-time lowlife with a long rap sheet accused of a double hate crime: killing his wife's deaf black lover. When Watson stubbornly decides not to plead out his client, he is soon evicted from his comfortable life: His boss fires him, his wife leaves him and takes the children, and the Whitlow case begins to consume all of his time.
He has only two allies--Rachel Palmquist, a beautiful, brainy neuroscientist with her own designs on his client and on Watson himself, and Myrna Schweich, a punk criminal-defense lawyer with orange hair who swears like a trooper and definitely inhales. Watson's finished. Or is he?To answer that question requires, among many other things, a brain scan for Watson in a state of strapped-down arousal, a Voice Transcription Device to eavesdrop on a dead deaf man's conversation, two chimpanzees who have no choice but to love each other, and a blind news vendor who demonstrates a real touch when it comes to making money.
For all the Dickensian energy and humor of this ingenious story, Brain Storm also stands at the center of many modern controversies, from the death penalty and the circus atmosphere of criminal trials to neuroscientific and moral quandaries about sex, crime, and religion. Rachel tells Watson that free will is a fiction: "There's not much you can do about it if you're biologically predisposed to violence or sexual misbehavior. You just have to make the best of it, and try not to get caught."
Once a deliberate yes-man at home and in the office, Joe Watson finds himself fighting not only to save his marriage and his career but also to hold intact his conviction that a person is more than a series of chemical reactions.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When white supremacist James Whitlow shoots his wife's lover, a deaf African American sign language teacher, he finds himself a prime candidate for the application of new hate-crime statutes. But is he guilty of a hate crime? Enter his court-appointed lawyer, Joe Watson of Stern, Pale, the best law firm in St. Louis. A research wonk by avocation, an old schoolmate of Whitlow's by chance, young Watson resists pressure from colleagues and family to plea bargain: until all the facts come out, he means to stand by his client. Watson is such a nebbish, however, that it's hard to feel for him, especially since his triumphs occur offstage. He may write one hell of a brief, but as an action figure he often seems superfluous. Myrna Schweich, the tough-talking criminal lawyer he hooks up with, makes the good suggestions; curmudgeonly old Judge Stang explains the points of law; and even Rachel Palmquist, the sexy neuroscientist who wants to operate on Whitlow, gives Watson legal advice. Will he fall for Rachel's brainy charms? Since Watson can't imagine his wife (an unattractive walk-on character) as anything other than the ball and chain to whom he's pledged fidelity, it's difficult to care. Dooling, a lawyer whose White Man's Grave was a 1994 NBA finalist, has taken an intriguing law-school conundrum and grafted it onto a study of white-collar mores. The result is half bull session, half film noir. Yet the novel is saved by its extra-dry sense of satire (the Jamesian nameplay is only the start), faltering only when Dooling seems to ask that we take his characters with a straight face rather than as elements in a sharply drawn lampoon of a society drowning in legalisms. Film rights to Alan Pakula.
