New York : Harpercollins Publishers, 1993. 1st Edition. Description: 305 p. ; 25 cm. some age related yellowing to Page edges. Thin Black line across bottom page edge block. Dimensions: 1.2 x 6 x 9.5 inches Weight: 1.2 pounds A hard-boiled Los Angeles criminal lawyer copes with a son in trouble, a passion for his biggest client's wife, and cops who want to pin a murder on him. By the author of City of Gold. From Publishers Weekly Deighton's latest, an enjoyable departure from his tales of British espionage ( City of Gold , etc.), introduces a protagonist with definite series potential. Harried L.A. lawyer Mickey Murphy is plagued by a slew of eccentrics who fully bear out the book's epigraph: "If America is a lunatic asylum then California is the Violent Ward." Among them are an ex-wife who tries to get more alimony by perching on the ledge outside his office, a slightly over-the-hill actor in search of a handgun, a Robert Maxwell clone called Sir Jeremy Westbridge and a Trump-like entrepreneur named Zach Petrovich, who owns Murphy's law firm and is married to his high school sweetheart. Their maneuverings spark a complicated plot whose many ramifications include a charitable organization that doubles as a clearinghouse for those seeking to fake their own deaths and the set-up of a tax-free Peruvian corporation through the use of bearer shares, but Murphy keeps all the craziness in perspective with a first-person narration that unfolds as a series of quiet, subtle surprises. Told in perfect Dashiell Hammett style, with the clues all noted but never underlined, this novel respects the reader's intelligence and almost begs for a rereading just to savor how skillfully Deighton has woven everything together.
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