A True Verdict by Robert Rotstein

Published by Blackstone Publishing on January 14, 2025

A True Verdict milks the comedic side of people whose political viewpoints dictate their opinions about subjects that have nothing to do with politics. A discharged employee’s claim of whistleblower retaliation and race discrimination is turned upside down by the novel’s end. Robert Rotstein uses melodrama and silly plot twists to lighten the story, but by the end, sharply divided jurors share an aha moment and unite in a mutual desire for justice — whatever that turns out to be.

Told from multiple points of view, the story follows jury deliberations at the end of a civil trial. Most chapter narrators are jurors, although significant contributions are made by the lawyers, the judge, a judge’s law clerk, a lawyer’s assistant, and a blogger. Occasional excerpts from transcripts acquaint the reader with key trial testimony.

The plaintiff is Ellison Picard. Both his first and last names will be recognizable to science fiction fans. Picard is a young Black man with a spinal fracture that confines him to a wheelchair.

Picard worked for MediMiracle as a statistician. MediMiracle is a startup drug company that has developed only one product, but it will be revolutionary and extraordinarily profitable if it works. The company claims that the drug cures all addictions — drugs, alcohol, sex, whatever. If the product works, it will clearly save lives.

Picard claims he reviewed the drug’s post-approval testing data and discovered a life-endangering side effect that is disproportionately harmful to Black patients. He claims he blew the whistle, that he was fired for doing so, and that the company invented a story about his violent behavior to justify his discharge. He sued the company for race discrimination and for violating a law that protects whistleblowers.

The company claims it fired Picard because he attacked his employer’s CEO in the company’s lobby. Like many disputes that go to trial, the truth depends on which side’s witnesses the jury believes.

After a transcript excerpt sets the scene, the story begins with the eight jurors filing out of the courtroom. Picard’s lawyer, M. Bailey Klaus, introduces the reader to MediMiracle’s CEO and founder, Peyton Burke, “a Forbes Magazine billionaire, stylish, attractive, and not yet forty years old” who “doesn’t fear losing. What mega-rich sociopath does?”

The lawyer representing MediMiracle and Burke does fear losing. She worked under Klaus’ supervision at his former firm before she stole his clients. Her performance in the trial will either enhance or destroy her self-esteem, not to mention her continued employment if she costs her firm its biggest client.

We then meet a quirky group of jurors. Two will not last long after they are caught in an amusing violation of the rules governing juror fraternization. The remaining jurors are a veterinary technician, a scientist, a retiree who is fighting a losing battle against a lung disease, a cleaner who has been a naturalized citizen for two decades, a far-right furniture store owner, and a far-left editor. They disagree about everything, sometimes with colorful language. One juror sees Burke as an admirable role model for women while another regards her as an arrogant bitch.

The political opinions of the jurors who have any are exaggerated for comedic effect. Even funnier are the jurors who base their decisions on factors that are just as irrelevant as politics. The cleaner brings the most common sense and the least prejudice to the jury room.

Much of the story involves the bickering of jurors who initially have difficulties setting aside their preconceptions about the parties, the lawyers, and each other. Additional humor comes from the issues that sidetrack the jury. In my favorite example, a juror explains that facial expressions are indicative of lying by telling detailed stories about relatives or boyfriends who made those expressions.

The story touches upon serious questions of racial identity, racism, and corporate disregard of employees' rights. It uses those questions as a backdrop for humor, not to explore burning social issues. Some readers might find some of the humor to be offensive, but Robert Rotstein offends the left and right with equal vigor. Readers who relax and laugh at the parts they find funny will probably like the book in the end.

Subplots include Klaus’ misunderstanding of his assistant’s feelings about him and the law clerk’s hilarious attempts to influence the judge’s decisions in the case. They add to the story’s goofiness.

A True Verdict could be used to teach a course in small-group decision-making. Each juror has a different style. One is pushy. One is insecure. One is accusatory. One is timid. They have almost nothing in common except a desire to carry out a civic duty as best they can.

Will the jurors set aside their differences and dig through the evidence until they find something they can agree to be true? The story is too biting to be pollyannish, but it’s told with good humor. It pokes fun at people of all political persuasions while reflecting the hope that most people can overcome divisive issues and behave decently when it matters.

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My Darling Boy by John Dufresne

Published by W. W. Norton & Company on January 14, 2025

The protagonist of the novel I’ll review after My Darling Boy describes his life as “a long domestic novel’s worth of childhood trauma too common and boring to dwell upon.” While My Darling Boy is a domestic novel, and while its childhood trauma (daddy didn’t pay enough attention to me) is common, the story is too engaging to be boring.

My Darling Boy is a story of hope and death that unfolds in the context of a father-son relationship. The son is an adult and has left home, but he’s addicted to pills. The father wants to help but doesn’t know how. The father gives the son well-intentioned advice, some good, some mundane, mostly unwanted. Because it avoids sentiment, the story rings true.

Olney Kartheizer was a staff writer for a Florida newspaper who was relegated to writing obits after the paper killed its book section, and then its travel section, and then its Sunday supplement. Olney retired and now passes his time by working at a miniature golf course.

Early in the novel, Olney is a bit adrift. Apart from his miniature golf gig, he enjoys watching a cable access show about a reverend and his family. “Olney is aware that what attracts him to the show is this loving family in a cozy home, all smiles and comfort, and the boy who will not grow up and will never leave.” Olney has given up believing in God but he “enjoys watching religious programs on TV, especially those that tend toward spectacle and ostentation, and he does wish he could believe in something that transcends our mortal lives, but he just can’t.”

Olney believes he spent 29 years as a devoted husband to Kat and a doting father to Cully. His perception is not shared by Cully, whose childhood seems to have been shaped by sorrow that his only friend moved away. As an adult, Cully eventually makes a familiar complaint about Olney as a father who judged him rather than accepting him without reservation.

By the time he is 18, Cully is injuring himself in feigned accidents to obtain pain medication. Doctors prescribe anti-depressants that make him “ill or impotent or confused or anxious or suicidal” without easing his pain. He borrows money from his dad to begin a new life but he always spends the money on pills. When Olney rescues Cully from a suicide attempt (thereby earning his son’s wrath), Kat decides she has had enough and moves out.

Olney has fond memories of pulling his son on a wagon, memories that Cully lost or never formed. Olney is angry that the adult Cully has deprived him of the loving son he wants to remember. Both characters have understandable perspectives, leaving the reader to wonder whether it will ever be possible for them to bridge their resentments. Cully certainly doesn’t make it easy but, to his credit, Olney never stops trying. That makes him likable, or at least sympathetic.

Olney will eventually begin a relationship with Mireille Tighe, although he quickly learns that Mireille has a disorder that impairs her ability to swallow. She is well along the road to death.

My Darling Boy could be seen as a reminder that death is ever present (Olney knows that from writing obituaries), making it important to treasure the days we have. But neither life nor the novel are that simple. Mireille represents hope, even if it is only the hope of having another good day before she can no longer breathe. Cully, on the other hand, never has a good day and, although he tells himself that he’ll get clean, he has no real hope of achieving a better state than oblivion.

Olney thinks: “You can’t live without hope, and you wouldn’t want to.” But when that thought resurfaces later in the novel, “he thinks hope contradicts the future, doesn’t it? He thinks of all the people who have come and gone in his life, and how once they start going, they don’t stop.” Hope and death are antagonists in a competition that death will always win.

The story also explores fear of abandonment, a fear that has been an important part of Olney’s life. “He can’t be the last person to leave a meeting or a social gathering. He doesn’t mind solitude. He minds being left behind.” Cully feels he was abandoned by his father, although Cully is the one who ran away from home — and who repeatedly runs away from Olney, rehab, and life. His sense of abandonment might be irrational, or it might be a convenient excuse to find oblivion with oxy, but how people feel is how they feel.

Novels about addiction often reinforce the truism that it is impossible to help someone who doesn’t want to be helped. Cully’s AA sponsor understands that even if Cully doesn’t want to be helped (and thus will not fundamentally change), people need to be there for him so he can at least survive. Olney repeatedly urges Cully to get into rehab but Cully has a cynical view of the industry: “They aren’t in the recovery business. They’re in the moneymaking business. And there’s more money in relapse than in recovery.” Is this a valid criticism or an excuse delivered by an addict who isn’t ready to live without drugs? Perhaps both are true.

These are insightful themes, delivered in a plot that meanders a bit. My Darling Boy fits the definition of a novel as a messy house, but the mess is carefully controlled, each new diversion — from an unexpected gunshot to Olney’s waking visions of a future in which Cully is healthy and productive — adds something noteworthy to the story. The novel does a good bit of truth telling without becoming preachy. As a story of difficult lives spent navigating a complex world, My Darling Boy is the best kind of domestic drama.

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Another Man in the Street by Cararyl Phillips

Published by ‎ Farrar, Straus and Giroux on January 7, 2025

Another Man in the Street is a story of migration that proceeds on multiple fronts. The character who links the others emigrated to England from the West Indies. Years later, he makes good on a vow by bringing his wife and son to England, but they might have been happier in Saint Kitts. Another significant character made his way to England after being released from a displacement center in Germany when the Second World War ended.

The primary protagonist is Victor Johnson. When he is almost 27, Vincent defies his father by moving to England with the hope of finding a job at a newspaper — an ambition sparked by his newspaper delivery job in Saint Kitts. Vincent leaves his wife Lorna behind but vows to send for her, as well as his son Leon.

On the voyage to England, the ship’s captain sets in motion a recurring theme of British resentment of colonials of color. The captain is convinced that the “coloureds” should remain in the colonies. “We make things all nice and easy for you, don’t we? Cheap passage to England, no questions asked. Loose women and lots of jobs. But have you any idea how many of you coloured scroungers are already in England? It’s the sixties now and we’re still letting you in.” Racist attitudes about immigrants pop up on other occasions but are underplayed. Perhaps that was a wise decision, although it prevents the divide between white and Black or between immigrants and British nationals from becoming a defining theme.

Victor gets a job “lifting and moving barrels” at a pub in Notting Hill where the owner calls him “Lucky” while letting him stay with the rats in the pub’s basement. A fair amount of attention is devoted to a barmaid named Molly who cheats on her boyfriend with a bartender, but it isn’t clear why she’s in the story. Perhaps her most important role is complaining about her discomfort at working with a “coloured” staff member.

Narration shifts to the point of view of the white bartender who is shagging Molly. The bartender is stealing liquor from the pub but allows the owner to believe that Victor is the thief. The bartender patronizes Victor when, on a lark, he asks Victor to take him to his “coloured hostel” where they can smoke some weed. These are a few examples of white entitlement that set the story’s tone. Shortly after Victor leaves his job, the white bartender gets his comeuppance, perhaps because of Victor, but any drama that arises out of that incident quickly dissipates.

Victor next works as a rent collector for Peter Feldman, who believes his Black tenants will be less inclined to dodge a Black rent collector. Peter came to England as a child to escape the Nazi persecution that destroyed his family. Like Victor, he feels himself an outsider in a society that doesn’t accept him without reservation.

Peter’s secretary Ruth has an extensive backstory that includes giving up a daughter for adoption at her parents’ insistence. Ruth eventually moves in with Peter for the convenience of living near her job. She is vaguely aware that Peter is Jewish, but “she didn’t really know what this meant, other than some people didn’t like them.” She doesn’t know why Peter won’t talk about his history. More distressing to her is Peter’s lack of interest in sex, although he never shares the history that might help her understand his circumstances.

After Victor makes good on his promise to bring Lorna and her son Leon to England, he grows disenchanted with Lorna’s nagging. Victor takes a liking to Ruth, who shares a residence with Peter, but neglects to tell her that he is living with Lorna and Leon. To meet her need for sex, she begins sleeping with Victor, only to discover that he already has a family.

Lorna narrates a brief chapter. Her grievance amounts to: “Some people just have sex, but you wondered if you might also discover love, so that sex and love might arrive like twins, but this didn’t happen. He simply sexed you.” When Victor finally abandons Lorna for Ruth, he is unapologetic. “No doubt he thought he could go further in this world with a white woman on his arm,” Lorna thinks, but it isn’t clear that Victor thinks about much about race at all.

Along with Lorna and Leon, the daughter Ruth gave away for adoption returns to the story to cause friction. Ruth struggles with the guilt of giving away her daughter while Victor remains estranged from Leon. The larger point seems to be that the lives of immigrants, like the lives of most people, take unpredictable turns and inspire harsh judgments by others. Immigrants are no less likely than long-term residents to live soap opera lives. Readers who enjoy stories of broken or breaking families will find much to like in Another Man in the Street.

Victor begins to realize his ambition to be a journalist when he gets a gig writing for a paper that caters to immigrants from the West Indies, then takes a job writing for a serious paper as the voice of England’s coloured population. As a coloured journalist, Victor is only allowed to cover coloured stories. He at least has made progress toward his ultimate goal, but nothing is easy for Victor and the journalism gig is just another job that he won’t keep.

We follow Victor’s life to its conclusion, spending significant time with collateral characters along the way. The story has moments of insight into the varying experiences that migrants might experience, depending on the cause of their migration and their skin color. On the whole, however, the story lacks vigor. Any energy it builds dissipates as the focus shifts among characters.

To the extent that Cararyl Phillips attempts to find an overarching theme that draws the storylines together, the theme seems to dissipate before the novel cruises to its conclusion, leaving a collection of characters and their disparate stories that never quite cohere. Notwithstanding that criticism, the characters are fully drawn and provide interesting contrasts of migrant experiences in England during the decades that followed World War II. My sense is that the story could have been more carefully focused, but it always held my interest.

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Billy the Kid by Ryan C. Coleman

Published by Blackstone Publishing on October 15, 2024

Was Billy the Kid a people’s revolutionary hero or a murderer? Billy the Kid, a fictionalized account of his life, suggests that he was both.

The novel begins in 1877 when Henry “Kid” Antrium is seventeen. He has already learned a lesson that will govern his life: “No matter a man’s size, or lack thereof, there was one great equalizer: the gun.” Although Henry has mastered the art of shooting, he had been “making his living through thievery, relocating horses from the soldiers at nearby Fort Grant.”

Henry gets on the wrong side of Frank Cahill by breaking out of jail and having the arrogance to stay in Arizona. He saves himself from a lethal beating with his pistol, but Cahill’s death motivates a change of name and location.

In New Mexico, Henry has his first of many confrontations with Buck Morton. That encounter leads him to the Jesse Evans gang. Henry uses his credentials as a horse thief and killer to earn a position with the gang. He announces himself to the world as William H. “Billy” Bonney.

Much of the story takes place in Lincoln County, New Mexico. To the extent that the territory is governed at all, the government is corrupt. L.G. Murphy has made a nice living by selling and renting worthless land that he doesn’t actually own. Murphy enjoys the protection of the territorial governor, a presidential appointee who is under the thumb of Boss Catron, whose bank who holds mortgages on most of the property in New Mexico.

The Evans gang sells stolen horses to Murphy, who then sells them to a nearby Army post. Murphy knows the business is about to fall apart, but he keeps that fact from the partners who buy him out. His underhanded dealings lead to conflicts that become important to Billy’s story. Also important is Billy’s alliance with Alexander and Susan McSween, Murphy’s “sworn enemies.” The disparate power factions will inspire Billy to side with the underdog and kill anyone who seems unfit for a decent life, but what does that say about Billy’s decency?

Billy is clearly on the road to a shootout. The violence that ensues touches the good and bad about equally, although separating the good from the bad is challenging in a lawless territory, where the libertarian principles “might makes right” and “greed is good” control behavior.

We learn biographical details about Billy’s adoptive parents, his separation from his brother and their distant relationship, and a transgression that led to his first jail break and horse theft. These are presumably historically accurate and provide fodder for the way Ryan Coleman shapes Billy’s personality. Billy is motivated to gain wealth so he can give his brother a better life, but he evolves into a killer who has a fearless belief in immortality that inevitably dooms gunslingers.

Billy doesn’t appreciate the local press siding with the powerful forces that control New Mexico, but he’s hardly a paragon of nuanced thought. He occasionally frets about moral issues — particularly the exploitation of Indians, Mexicans, and working people by the wealthy and powerful — but gunslingers are shallow philosophers. Coleman probably gives Billy about as much personality as he actually had, which isn’t much. This isn’t the novel to read if you are looking for deep insights into the life of a gunfighter, although Billy’s life might not have been one that leads to deep insights.

Billy the Kid isn’t a literary achievement — it doesn’t rival Mary Doria Russell’s brilliant retelling of Doc Holliday’s legendary life — but it is nevertheless a fun tale.

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The Answer Is No by Fredrik Backman

Published by ‎ Amazon Original Stories on December 1, 2024

Love is not for the selfish. Fortunately for Lucas, he is happy to be selfish and doesn’t care about being unloved. Lucas believes that “responsibility” and “commitment” are “two of the easiest ways of ruining any perfectly good day.” Lucas prefers to be free to do what he wants when he wants without considering the competing desires of other people. He also understands the danger of starting conversations. “If you ask people what they think, they start thinking, and that’s how wars start.”

Narrating “The Answer Is No,” Lucas tells the reader that there is something perfect about not having to share a pint of ice cream. He recommends “being really content with your life and not immediately thinking: Wow, now everything is really perfect, maybe we should have a baby?” Because a baby introduces another person in your life, and other people are the source of all unhappiness.

It's not that Lucas dislikes other people. He just has no need to interact with them. He appreciates the people who cook his pad thai and those who deliver it to his door, but he is happier if he doesn’t need to speak with them. To those who maintain that humans are herd animals who need to be together, he counters that “humans have historically proved to be in-need-of-therapy animals,” the need for therapy being triggered by keeping company with other humans.

Lucas likes to be left alone so he can drink wine and play video games. He feels sorry for people who want something to happen in their lives. Lucas “lives in an apartment, which he would consider the perfect form of storage for people, were it not for the great virus of civilization: neighbors.” His default response when a neighbor wants something is to tell them no.

Some of Lucas’ neighbors want him to help solve the mystery of a frying pan that a tenant discarded outside — almost on the sidewalk! — and Lucas has just managed to talk them into going away when his downstairs neighbor appears. She’s upset that he changed his internet password and is affronted when he accuses her of stealing his internet. It isn’t stealing, after all, if she only takes the little bit of the internet that leaks into her apartment.

Craziness ensues, primarily in the form of a large and ever-growing junk pile that originated with the frying pan, a committee of three crazy residents who place Lucas in charge of the pile, and a group of men who worship Lucas because they are convinced he is an angel. Eccentric people are Fredrik Backman’s bread and butter, the kind of people who make random comments like “I usually keep my peanuts next to a jar of peanut butter, so they understand what I’m capable of!” Other characters, like a woman who is hiding from an abusive husband by pretending to be in a coma, are more poignant. Backman also pokes fun at official and unofficial bureaucrats, protestors, middle managers, Facebook groups, and self-help advice.

Lucas might not be a reader’s ideal neighbor, but he sometimes expresses wise thoughts, including his recognition that some people are more interested in blaming and punishing people for the problems they cause (like a discarded frying pan) than in solving the problems (by, for example, picking up the frying pan). When the lone frying pan turns into a pile of trash (it’s easier to break the rules when someone else has paved the way), everyone in the neighborhood tries to guess at the culprits’ identities, “which somehow always seem to be people who don’t look like the people who are doing the guessing.”

Naturally, Lucas will feel himself making connections as the story progresses. He might despise himself for behaving socially, he might feel feverish as he comes down with a case of empathy, but working together with neighbors helps him solve some problems (although yes, other people are always the problem). But that doesn’t mean that Lucas needs to change his entire philosophy of life. His final plan to avoid responsibility and commitment is fitting and funny.

This is a short story, but sufficiently long — and sufficiently entertaining — that readers in need of a laugh might not feel bad about paying a couple of bucks to enjoy it.

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