The Colour of Law
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
A. Scott Fenney is a hotshot corporate lawyer at a big Dallas firm. At 33, in the prime of his life, he rakes in $750,000 a year, drives a Ferrari and comes home every night to a mansion in Dallas's most exclusive neighbourhood. He also comes home to one of Dallas's most beautiful women, with whom he has a much-loved daughter, Boo. For Fenney, life could not be better.
But when a senator's son is killed in a hit-and-run, Fenney is asked by the state judge to put his air-conditioned lifestyle on hold to defend the accused: a black, heroin-addicted prostitute - a very different client to the people Fenney usually represents. And, more importantly, she is not going be paying Ford Stevens $350 an hour for the privilege of his services.
Under fire from all sides, Fenney drafts in a public defender to take the case on. Yet as Scott prepares to hand over to Bobby, he feels increasingly guilty about the path he is taking, because Scott still believes in the principle of justice.
The question is: does he believe in it strongly enough to jeopardise everything in his life he holds dear? And to what lengths is the dead man's power-hungry father prepared to go to test Fenney's resolve?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A. Scott Fenney, the hotshot young Dallas attorney of Gimenez's debut, has a beautiful house, an idle, social-climbing wife and a spoiled daughter; his most lucrative client is local magnate Tom Dibrell, whom he regularly rescues from sexual harassment suits. When Clark McCall, the no-account son of Texas' senior senator (and presidential hopeful), is murdered, Fenney is forced by his firm to pro bono the suspect, heroin-addicted prostitute Shawanda Jones. While admitting to the crime, Jones claims it was self-defense, and refuses to plead out to avoid the death penalty giving Fenney fits. With Jones's life on the line, Fenney agonizes about whether he can do the trial, losing wife, job, and country club membership as he slowly uncovers the truth about McCall. Along the way, Fenney takes custody of Jones's precocious daughter, Pajamae, in a cross-cultural subplot with more clich than life-lesson. A former Dallas attorney, Gimenez offers an entertaining window onto the city's legal world, but he telegraphs most of the story, and his attempts at negotiating Dallas's race and class conflicts fall flat; whether platitudinous or wise-cracking, the minor characters unintentionally reinforce the stereotypes the book works so hard to combat.
