Midnight Patriots

Paul Levine is a prolific author, and in Midnight Patriots he began with the reality of the friendship of Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein. This is the second book in the Einstein-Chaplin series. I previously favorably reviewed the first novel Midnight Burning.In Midnight Patriots,  Levine included nearly every famous person I could think of from the 1930’s and 40’s including President Roosevelt, gangster Mickey Cohen, singer Lena Horne, scientist Robert Oppenheimer, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, aviator Charles Lindbergh, various Nazi agents, newspaperman William Randolph Hearst, and many, many more were mentioned.

There was a light-hearted quality to the interactions between Chaplin and Einstein who were probably the most famous people in the world at the time. Both men were involved in various sexual escapades. Chaplin had just debuted his film, The Great Dictator, which ridiculed Hitler. The film was a smashing success in the U.S., and Levine made Chaplin the target of an assassination attempt Nazis because Hitler had been enraged by the content of the movie. Meanwhile Einstein was struggling with the idea of helping Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project develop the atom bomb. Einstein was a pacifist, but he was troubled both by the idea of developing the atom bomb, but also the forces that Hitler was putting into play. However, the idea of staying silent and allowing Hitler to develop the bomb was even more dangerous, so he agreed to help Oppenheimer with questions about theoretical physics, but he agonized over the loss of his pacifist values. At the same time Chaplin was the target of assassination by Nazis, Einstein was the target of Levine’s kidnapping scheme that would force Einstein to help the Nazis get the bomb first.

The chase Nazis and the two protagonists took place across the U.S. as many of these same celebrities traveled from the East Coast to the West Coast on the most luxurious of railroad accommodations. Levine did a great job putting all the famous personalities together while addressing the most troubling issues of the day, war versus isolation, nuclear energy, and racism. I loved the first book and this sequel was equally well done

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Midnight Burning

 We at Men Reading Books have already reviewed at least seven Paul Levine books, and all have been favorably received. Perhaps, he is best known for his Jake Lassiter series, and the subtitle of Midnight Burning is An Einstein Chaplin Thriller. While being a thriller (no doubt about that), it is also a very clever book of historical fiction. Hopefully, there will be more books about his two protagonists.

In real life 1937, Einstein and Chaplin were probably the two most famous men in the world. Chaplin had produced many short films in the 1910’s, but then he began producing feature films in the 1920’s and 1930’s, including City Lights, Modern Times, and notably for this book, The Great Dictator in 1940. Einstein had already written his General Theory of Relativity. He was widely considered to be the smartest man in the world. These two men were friends and clearly enjoyed each other’s company. The fictional dialogue that Levine created was fantastic, exceedingly crafty.

 

The story takes place in Los Angeles during 1937, and it focuses on Hitler’s rise to power and the inhuman nature of that realm. People were afraid to disagree with the Third Reich as the result of their obvious brutality. There was a large German population in Los Angeles which was not only supportive of Hitler, but there were active plans to overthrow the U.S. government. Levine used a Keystone Cops type of story regarding the group's attempt to steal machine guns from an armory in Long Beach, as well as their failed attempt to train soldiers at the Murphy Ranch in Whittier, California. The police department in L.A. was corrupt and backed the pro-fascist groups. Given the nature of the Third Reich and it’s fascist supporters, Einstein found himself reconsidering his ardent pacifist views. He had been against participating in the research to develop the atom bomb, but he knew that the scientists in Germany were close to developing their own bomb. Although very conflicted about doing so, Einstein was compelled to lobby FDR to provide funds for the research.

 

I loved this story, and it only solidifies my plans to read more Paul Levine. This book definitely gets my strongest recommendation. The information about the German presence and influence in Southern California is consistent with a historical fiction novel by Susan Elia MacNeal entitled Daughter Traitor Spy which I’ve favorably reviewed in the blog.

#1499. Early Grave by Paul Levine

Seven of the 12 Jake Lassiter series have been reviewed at Men Reading Books, so you know we are fans of Paul Levine. Early Grave is the 12^th book In case you don’t know, Lassiter’s first career was as an NFL linebacker, and he was on the undefeated team in Miami in 1972. In his second career, he became a very successful attorney, but he led a hard life and had left his active practice to pursue a less stressful role as the head of the ethics group for Florida’s State Bar where he handed out fair justice to attorneys who had scammed their own clients, although his means of doing so was unconventional. By this time in his life, he was beginning to suffer from symptoms of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalitis) and his relationship with Melissa Gold, a neuropathologist, was in trouble. She happened to be an expert in CTE and was involved in ongoing research on the subject. Jake and Melissa were in therapy to save their relationship, and he was trying to grow out of his long-term and admittedly juvenile type of unsuccessful relationships.

 

Meanwhile, Jake’s godson suffered a horrific high school football injury in which Jake detected incompetence and over competitiveness of the successful coach, one who was sacrificing the safety of his players for victories. Tank Pittman was a former Dolphin teammate and the father of Rod who took a severe hit on the field at a time when he should not have been in the game. It was a life and death situation for Rod. Jake had forged the signature of Rod’s mother on the permission slip just so Rod could play, and after the injury, he felt appropriately guilty. Jake then decided to take on the legal challenge against the coach and Florida High School football. It was not Jake’s intent to abolish high school football, but it was his intent to interrupt it until the game could be made safe. But, he had never been involved in anything like the civil litigation that he wanted to pursue, and he sure looked to be in over his head.

 

Jake had to battle a corrupt judge and the Consortium, a secret organization that funded lawyers to fight against such lawsuits as Jake was bringing on Rod’s behalf. Rod’s parents were very unhappy that Jake did not accept the settlement that had been offered to him. In addition to CTE, Jake was also battling atrial fibrillation which was not well-controlled, and his medical conditions impacted the end of the trial and the end of this story. The courtroom drama was fantastic even if some of it was a bit unrealistic and might make my attorney friends somewhat uncomfortable – but it was still excellent drama. The title of the book might give you a clue to this story’s conclusion. I only hope that this is not the end of the Lassiter series – it’s too much fun for me to let go.

 

West Coast Don

Night Vision

I raved about Paul Levine’s first book in the Jake Lassiter series, To Speak for the Dead. I thought he had done a good job developing the protagonist, Lassiter, an attorney in Miami. Lassiter is an unconventional and irreverent guy who tells stupid stories when he is in the midst of great stress. I did not feel so strongly positive about the second book, Night Vision. As a psychiatrist, perhaps I’m too sensitive when the bad guy is in my profession. I’ve seen so many books and movies where psychiatrists were badly portrayed, and I can’t imagine a more deranged character than this British one, Dr. Pamela Maxson, a beautiful, intelligent psychopath. As the book approaches the end, the death of Dr. Maxson is tortuous and laughable. It was over the top and she climbed up a drawbridge only to lose her grip and fall 300 feet into the machinery that operated the bridge. Oh well. I may give Levine another chance, but I have a long reading queue and it might take me a while to get there.

To Speak for the Dead

To Speak for the Dead by Paul Levine is my first Paul Levine book, and this is the first in his Jake Lassiter series. There have been at least 14 Lassiter novels. I’m already hooked and I’ve downloaded the second, Night Vision. Lassiter is an attorney following the end of his career as a football player with the Miami Dolphins. He is nonconventional and irreverent – I loved him from the beginning. And Levine has surrounded Lassiter with a cast of the most interesting characters, not just the doctor he’s defending, a surgeon, Roger Stanton, but also his friend Phil Corrigan, a developer. It’s Corrigan’s death that led to Stanton being charged with malpractice. And, he’s suspected by some of murder. Judge Leonard is more interested in plotting his bets on the horses at Hialeah than in making correct rulings from the bench. Charlie Riggs is the pathologist and expert witness who is able to see through all of the evidence. There, there’s Lassiter’s secretary, Cindy, and his grandmother Granny Lassiter – wonderful characters, so you can look forward to Levine’s descriptions of them. Of course, there are sexual encounters among the principals, so you’ll get to read about that. I think Levine has threaded the needle regarding humor and advancing a mostly believable story. Now, I have a bunch of good new books to work my way through, and that’s the best news.

Bum Deal by Paul Levine

You remember Jake Lassiter, right? Ex-Miami Dolphin suicide squad player? Ran the wrong way with a fumble causing Miami to lose a game and miss out on the playoffs? Same guy with a history of concussions and now fears he is on a runaway train headed for the CTE station at the end of the line? Same guy who partners with Steve Soloman and Victoria Lord (just months from their nuptials) in a small defense attorney firm in Miami? Sure you do.

They are defense attorneys for the right reasons. To protect the innocent from being railroaded. OK, most of their clients deserved it, but still. There is always that one.

The Florida State DA and chief foil for Jake, Raymond Pincher, comes to Jack with an offer. Become a one-time prosecutor on a murder case. Not his cup of tea, but says OK. If it gets a scumbag off the streets.

Said scumbag is Dr. Clark Calvert, a Miami orthpaedic surgeon with control issues. Wants to make sure you and everyone else knows he is the smartest, wealthiest, most athletic, best looking person in the room. Likes to choke his women during sex. And when he was a resident up in New England, had this gorgeous undergrad girlfriend named Victoria Lord. You've heard of her. And he has retained the law firm of Soloman and Lord to defend him.

Jake's case isn't overflowing with evidence. Cuz there is no body, no evidence, no witness. For the prosecution consul, no problem. Unless you count The Titty Bar, a Georgia-based actress, a Miami mafia boss, et al. either trying to either help of stop Jakes prosecution of Dr. Calvert.

This is almost the polar opposite of the Field on Honor I just posted. While that was page after page after page of lightning-paced action, Bum Deal is page after page after page of in your face dialogue with legal mumbo jumbo used to twist the truth eight ways from Sunday. And I read this one way faster than than Field of Honor. Yeah, they are muy different. But Bum Deal was whole lot more entertaining as we approach summer. Sit down, put up your feet, grab a tequila, and let Jake and friends take you on a fun ride through the oppressive heat and humidity that permeates the Dade County court system.

Lots of folks will say that Carl Hiassen is their favorite author about Florida. Well, folks. Paul Levine should be your second favorite Florida author.

ECD

Bum Luck by Paul Levine

#12 in the continuing misadventures of former Miami Dolphins suicide squad hitter, aka 'wrong way Lassiter', now a solo (mostly) lawyer in Dade County. Remember the old joke, "what do you call the person who graduated last in med school? Doctor." Jake is sort of the lawyer version. "What do you call the person who finally passed the bar on the 4th try? Counselor."

Jake may talk a big game about justice, but when the gavel strikes, he is all about winning. And he just won. Got Marcus "Thunder" Thurston acquitted of murdering his wife. Thunder is a Florida native, Florida State All-American running back and now with the Dolphins. Rich beyond words. Endorsements out the wazoo. Penthouse apartment, a posse, and half naked bimbos playing beach volleyball in his penthouse. Said this 220 pound package of muscle feared for his life when his wife came at him with a pocketknife. So he 'stood his ground' and his wife is shot five times. Florida's 'stand your ground' law was the meat of Jake's defense of Thunder Thurston. Beat the State's homicide trial attorney Suzie (or was it Sallie?) Strychnine who needed a win to help propel her run for the State's top attorney office.

And right after the verdict was announced, Jake decided that Thunder Thurston has to die.

Early middle age Jake is mellowing a bit. Winning is giving way to 'truth, justice, and redemption.' And no better way to slide into this next stage of his life than to kill his most recent and famous client.

Being solo means the money cycles in like a sine wave. And now he's a bit low on funds. A firm he got fired from about 10yr ago calls and offers his job back along with a cushy assignment to get a summary judgment against an insurance company tossed.  Seems this insurance company was balking at paying out after the death of a client. The policy has a clause that a suicide within 12 months of activating the policy leads to no payout. The MMA mom of two kids took a lethal combination of drugs and alcohol at around 9-10pm on the 364th day of the policy and died early the next morning. Pretty clear cut. The 2 kids are S.O.L. Should be an easy win for Jake.

As Jake is reading over the timeline of the client's last year, he starts to see a pattern of behavior that suggests she was acting more erratically with each month. During the discovery process, Jake lets it slip that this MMA brawler was exhibiting all the classic signs of post-concussion syndrome and was probably unable to make the conscious decision to take her own life; her life was slipping away while the tau protein starts to assemble in her brain leading to CTE. With the help of a head injury expert witness, a new strategy forms.

Truth, justice. redemption.

And there is some truth, justice and redemption coming Thunder Thurston's way courtesy of Jake Lassiter.

While there are 12 Jake Lassiter books, this is the 2nd in the Lassiter, Solomon and Lord saga (and 4 Solomon and Lord books). They play the straight man (Solomon)/woman (Lord) to Jake's ever-present sarcasm. As Jake reminds them, he's only there to be close to Lord,but in reality, the three of them are very close and always watching each other's six even when they are facing off against each other in court.

An easy read, the length of which will distract you during a coast-coast flight. A lot of fun. As one reviewer said, 'a cross between Moonlighting and Night Court.' And that's an apt description. Can't imagine anyone looking for a fun escape would be disappointed. Having read a couple Lassiter books, I think I want to track down the first Lassiter book, To Speak for The Dead.

ECD

available March 28, 2017

Lassiter by Paul Levine

When we last looked in on Jake Lassiter, he was defending the male half of a two person male/female law practice because the guy may or may not have killed a Russian mobster.

We venture back a few years earlier. An Ohio-based insurance investigator is looking for her younger sister who, as a teenager, lit out of Toledo for Miami. Krista Larkin got hooked up with a porn producer and all around knockabout guy, disappeared and was never heard from again. Now, about 18 years later, her sister Amy is in town trying to run down an obscure clue that might bring some closure for the family.

Oh, yeah. Jake was one of the last people to see Krista. Helped her out of a jam and was rewarded that night for his efforts.

Realizing he obviously didn't do enough for Krista that fateful night, Jake offers his help to Amy. No charge. Charlie Zigler, the former porn king, is now a respected philanthropist in Miami and very well connected uptown, the state's attorney's office to be specific, but he still keeps his fingers in the international side of his porn distribution network. Zigler's mentor, Max Perlow, was once an underling to gangster Meyer Lansky.

Lassiter and the state's attorney, Alex Castiel, are friendly, mostly due to noon hour basketball in a lawyer's league. But their friendship gets seriously tested with each tidbit of new information. The loose noose that joins Castiel, Perlow, and Zigler tightens with every not-so-legal search or B&E done by Jake on behalf of Krista and Amy.

Pretty straight forward, yes? At least until Levine pops out a quick series of plot twists that take us in entirely different directions and eventual solutions.

Levine is quite talented at presenting crime fiction for the lawyer's perspective. Why? He was a lawyer practicing some pretty boring aspects of corporate law. He was influenced by Carl Hiassen (Miami-based columnist and a South Florida humor writer without peer) to give writing a try. Turns out the writing gig was way more fun than the law. He has something like 19 novels to his credit plus he penned a couple dozen episodes of the TV show JAG and another dozen episodes of First Monday. I first read Bum Rap earlier in the summer and checked this book out of the library expecting the Lassiter series to be a brief escapade by Levine.  Wrong. There are 10 Lassiter books.

Looks like I may have a new series  to work my way through now that I am up to date on Jack Reacher, Walt Longmire, Joe Pickett, Harry Bosch, and Elvis Cole/Joe Pike. Two down, eight more to find.

And no, this isn't the same character played by Tom Selleck in the mid 1980's. But Yes, it is the same character played by Gerald McRainey in the mid 1990s.

East Coast Don

Bum Rap by Paul Levine

Bum Rap is a legal thriller with a touch of romance.  Jake Lassiter, a former NFL linebacker and Victoria Lord and Steve Solomon, law partners and lovers are all Miami defense attorneys.  Solomon is arrested for murder and Lord hires Lassiter to defend her partner.

 

Solomon was hired by Nadia, a Russian bar girl working at a night club, to retrieve her passport from the club’s owner, Nicolai Gorev.  Gorev had helped Nadia immigrate to the United States in return for her work scamming customers at the club and was holding her passport as collateral.  Nadia had fallen in love with a customer and wanted her passport back so she could move on.  But at the meeting in Gorev’s office, the club owner ends up dead of a gunshot wound from Nadia’s gun.  Nadia steals a sack of diamonds from the wall safe and slips out the back door and Solomon is caught holding the gun when the police arrive.  Solomon tells the police that Nadia pulled the trigger but she has disappeared.  Now it’s up to Lassiter to convince a jury of Solomon’s innocence or find Nadia and deal with her unpredictable testimony.

Meanwhile we learn that the Gorev and his associate, Benjamin Coben (aka Benny the Jeweler) are being investigated by the Feds for diamond smuggling.  Solomon’s trial has already begun when they find Nadia living with her newfound love in Pennsylvania.  She cuts a deal with the Feds to testify against Benny the Jeweler in exchange for a free pass for her involvement in Gorev’s death.  To complicate matters further, Lassiter develops feelings for Lord.  So here he is, defending a client he’s not sure is innocent while day dreaming about the guy’s girlfriend.  He finds himself questioning his ethics in both his personal and professional lives.

Bum Rap is what we call an airplane book at Men Reading Books.  It’s an enjoyable quick read without much intellectual stimulation.  The characters are entertaining and somewhat likable but the plot is light on substance.  Perfect for the hurry up and wait chaos that is air travel.

Thanks to Net Galley for the advance look.