The Choice By Barry Reed

Crown Publishers, Inc., 352 pages, $20.00

Reviewed by Stephen M. Murphy in 1991

         Barry Reed's first novel, The Verdict, became a bestseller and hit movie because of its endearing and timeless plot - the underdog lawyer battling huge odds to scrape to victory - and unusual characterization, particularly of Boston attorney Francis X. Galvin. The Choice, which begins five years after The Verdict, contains many of these same plot elements but with an unusual twist. The bad guys are now Galvin's clients, and his sense of justice struggles with his duty to his clients. The result is a fast-paced but often disjointed story of Galvin's search for truth, in which Galvin discovers the troubling truth not only about his clients but also about himself.

         Fans of The Verdict hardly will recognize the new Galvin. As originally conceived by Reed and portrayed by Paul Newman in the movie, Galvin was a lawyer on the skids. After his victorious trial against St. Catherine Laboure Hospital (in which he uttered the immortal words:  "If you are going to try my case for me, Judge,... I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't lose it")  Galvin's life took a turn for the better. He drives a Jaguar and wears custom tailored suits. He has even traded beer with whiskey chasers for soda and bitters.

         The most significant change is his legal practice.  Instead of the dilapidated office where paint peeled off the walls and the elevator rarely ran, Galvin spends his time in the hallowed quarters of the Brahmin law firm of Hovington, Sturdevant, Holmes & Hall "where echoes of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Louis Brandeis, three Governors, two United States Senators, ten Superior Court justices still reverberated within the corridors." His clients are the rich and powerful - a banker accused of laundering money, a businessman involved in insider trading - who are willing and able to pay the firm's outrageous fees.

         Reed never satisfactorily explains why Galvin decided to sell out and join the establishment. Galvin himself does not question his decision until the middle of the book when he learns that his clients have not been completely honest with him. In a speech to a law school graduating class, he admits, "Not long ago I was a drunk, a sleazy ambulance chaser, working funeral parlors and hanging around courthouses, like a jackal waiting for some probate judge to throw a few legal scraps my way. I was a man searching, for a lost soul. My own! ... I'm not so sure I ever found it."

         Galvin's dilemma begins when he receives a surprise visit from young sole practitioner Tina Alvarez, who wants to refer him a product liability case. Children of her clients, a group of Portuguese families from Fall River, suffered devastating birth defects when, during pregnancy, their mothers ingested Lyosin - a new wonder drug in preventing coronary atherosclerosis.

         After meeting the families, Galvin decides to take the case but later reverses his decision when he learns that his firm represents Universal Multi-Tech, the British-based manufacturer of Lyosin, and Gammett Industries, its New Jersey distributor. Rather than completely abandon the families, Galvin convinces his mentor Moe Katz, miraculously recovered from the stroke that left him comatose at the end of The Verdict, to assist Alvarez.

         Despite Galvin's divided loyalties, his team of Hovington associates holds nothing back in defense of their clients, bombarding the plaintiffs with motions and discovery requests. As the plaintiffs' expenses mount, Moe Katz is forced to mortgage his home. A defense victory appears certain until Galvin's suspicions are aroused by the death of Universal's London postal carrier.  In a remarkable role reversal, he assumes a false identity to investigate his own clients. When he learns that Universal and Gammett altered documents, committed perjury and perhaps even murder, he is forced to make "the choice."

         To keep the plot moving - and it does move: from Boston to New Jersey to London - Reed sacrifices authenticity. Lawyers change sides as if they were playing a pickup basketball game. A successful plaintiff's medical malpractice attorney,  Reed well knows that the conflicts of interest in The Choice would never be allowed. (Note the recent case in San Francisco where a lawyer was disqualified from representing persons injured by asbestos because his paralegal once had worked for the defense firm.)   Nevertheless, he uses the conflicts of interest and the procedural inaccuracies - such as having a summary judgment hearing on the first day of trial - to enhance the drama of the plot.

         As Galvin agonizes over his choice, the plot tends to meander, taking some strange and unlikely turns.  Galvin's romantic interest, the alluring Dr. Sabrina Bok-Sahn,  Universal's director of medical research, disappears for an extended period. The IRA makes a sudden appearance when a ship explodes off the English coast. And Moe Katz unexpectedly receives tape recordings that could assure the plaintiffs of victory.

         Despite these flaws as well as the predictability of Galvin's choice, The Choice has many engaging moments.  Reed displays his considerable legal talent and medical knowledge in Galvin's hard-hitting cross-examination of the plaintiffs' expert Dr. Rafael Meideros. The proceedings in England before the Master of the Queen's Remembrances are fascinating and add a distinctive flavor to the story. Though less dramatic than The Verdict, The Choice does present an intriguing portrayal of the complexities, as well as the inequities, of our civil justice system.

 

The Deception by Barry Reed

Crown Publishers, 372 pages, $23.00

Reviewed by Stephen M. Murphy in 1997

         In Barry Reed's latest novel, The Deception, he returns to some of the same plot elements that made his first novel, The Verdict, so successful:  a comatose victim bringing a high-stakes medical malpractice case against a Catholic hospital in Boston. Instead of down-and-out Frank Galvin as the plaintiff's attorney, The Deception features Dan Sheridan, a 46 year old baseball-playing trial horse with a mixed civil and criminal practice. Sheridan faces many of the same obstacles as Galvin:  a prominent defendant, uncooperative witnesses, and a biased judge.

         The Deception blends the high stakes of a civil case (one based on Reed's own practice) with the moral underpinnings of a crime. As in his previous novels, Reed effectively portrays the disparity in vast resources, machinations, and cutthroat tactics of the defense. Nevertheless, despite some promising moments early on, The Deception ultimately proves unsatisfactory in large part because of its thin plot line.

         Donna DiTullio is a rising teenage tennis star burdened with a domineering father and bouts of major depression. Her psychiatrist is Dr. Robert Sexton, nationally renowned nephew of the Cardinal of Boston, who runs St. Anne's Hospital where Sexton is chief of the psychiatry department.

         Near the end of an extended hospitalization, Donna seems upbeat, anxious to leave the hospital and renew her career. Sexton holds a group session with Donna and two other patients near his office on the fifth floor. At a break Donna wanders to the Atrium and leans over a railing to gaze at the lobby five floors below. Sexton walks toward his office when he suddenly screams as Donna topples over the railing, landing on the lobby floor. She survives but has extensive brain damage. Sexton was the only one to see her fall.

         Donna's parents retain Sheridan, whom Reed introduced in The Indictment, in which Sheridan defended a physician accused of murdering his beautiful mistress. This time Sheridan sues the physician, Sexton, as well as St. Anne's Hospital for carelessly leaving a suicidal patient alone in a dangerous location.

         This simple premise drives the plot. Sheridan goes up against Mayan d'Ortega, a former assistant district attorney, now in private practice for an insurance defense firm. D'Ortega is "a stunning amber-skinned woman ... statuesque, jet black shoulder-length hair, almost an Oriental visage." As Sheridan knows from a prior case, d'Ortega is also a tough competitor. Since Sheridan beat her before, she is determined to even the score.

         In an effort to dig up dirt on Sexton, Sheridan's investigation takes some unusual turns. He decides to check out Sexton's background as far back as high school in New York, learning only that Sexton was an exceptional student. His persistence eventually pays off when he uncovers evidence that Sexton's girlfriend during medical school was murdered while jogging in Central Park. Sexton told the police he was attending class at the time of the murder. Sheridan's suspicions are aroused, however, when he learns that the girlfriend was pregnant at the time of her murder. Coincidently, or perhaps not, Donna DiTullio also was pregnant at the time of her tragic fall.

         Both sides engage in questionable tactics. The defense lobbies the judge to rule in its favor on a pre-trial motion, then solicits a key witness to Donna's fall, who also happens to be one of Sexton's patients, to entrap Sheridan. With a hidden wire tape-recording their conversation, she tries to seduce Sheridan and induce him to suborn perjury. Despite some ethical lapses of his own, Sheridan refuses to take the bait.

         He has no qualms, however, about hiring an investigator to burglarize Sexton's home. While jogging just before trial, Sheridan nearly gets shot by a sniper. He suspects Sexton and sends his investigator to find the gun in Sexton's home. The trail leads to shady criminal elements.

         For the first half of the book, The Deception reads like a mundane medical malpractice case, in fact, one with obvious liability. Nevertheless, Reed manages to build tension by showing the defense's devious strategy to force Sheridan into a settlement. The defense knows that the value of the case will drop dramatically if Donna dies. When she is transferred from St. Anne's Hospital to a state facility in Western Massachusetts, Sheridan suspects this strategy immediately. He turns down a $300,000 settlement offer, saying he will take only policy limits of $20 million. Then he takes control of Donna's medical care, saving her life, and even improving her condition to the point where she can communicate by blinking her eyes.

         By introducing criminal elements, Reed takes The Deception beyond a simple malpractice case. Unfortunately, the plot then seems forced, and the characters lose their credibility. At the beginning of the book, both Sexton and Sheridan are well-drawn, convincing characters. By the end, as the story nears resolution, their actions become outrageous, defying belief. One gets the impression Reed was writing with an eye toward the movie:  a condensed Hollywood finish full of action, shock, betrayal.

         Despite his failings, Sheridan impresses the reader with his honorable intentions. At the beginning of the case a witness put him down by saying:  "'You and your kind never build, never try to improve or create.... You're like jackals, feeding and living off the misery of others.'"  Even with the lure of $20 million, Sheridan remains focused on helping his client. Instead of living off Donna DiTullio's misery, he alleviates her misery.

         Though his final tactics may be not only "deceptive" but also criminal, we forgive him for this. Strange as it seems Sheridan reminds us of lawyers, real and fictional, from another time. In this age of lawyer bashing, Sheridan is a rarity:  a fictional lawyer motivated by something other than greed.

 

The Indictment by Barry Reed

Crown Publishers, 370 pages, $22.00

Reviewed by Stephen M. Murphy in 1995

         Boston lawyer Barry Reed published the blockbuster novel, The Verdict, in 1980, long before legal thrillers became mainstays on the bestseller lists. The Verdict enjoyed widespread popularity due to the movie starring Paul Newman as protagonist Frank Galvin, a lawyer on the skids with a potentially huge malpractice case against a Catholic hospital. Reed concedes that without Newman, "I probably would have sold twenty thousand copies and that would have been the end of it. I would have been writing poetry or love letters here and there."

         Nevertheless, Reed still waited a decade before writing his next novel, The Choice, featuring a recycled Frank Galvin as a well-heeled defense lawyer for a powerful multi-national drug company. Although less well-known than The Verdict, The Choice still sold - according to Reed - over six hundred thousand copies in paperback. The movie option for The Choice was sold to Orion Pictures, but has been dormant due to Orion's financial problems.

         The Indictment is Reed's third novel, and the first to feature a criminal case. Although predominately a medical malpractice attorney, Reed believed "the idea of cause of death and time of death - as in the O.J. Simpson case - would be very interesting to the reader." His studies of pathology in civil wrongful death cases enabled him to write a riveting opening chapter in which the county medical examiner conducts a meticulous autopsy of the murder victim, describing each finding and conclusion in detail.

         The book also introduces a new protagonist, Dan Sheridan, another Irish Boston attorney, though very different from Frank Galvin. Sheridan is senior partner of Sheridan & Buckley, a two-lawyer criminal defense and personal injury firm. Unlike Galvin, Sheridan enjoys a solid reputation and drinks in moderation. Reed decided not to use Galvin for two reasons. "Frank Galvin's getting pretty old; he's like an aging fast-ball pitcher," he explains. "He was fairly old in The Verdict and that was fourteen years ago." Reed had a much more practical reason, however:  "My contract with Orion for the movie of The Choice wouldn't let me use the same character."

         The Indictment begins with the discovery of the body of Angela Williams, an exotic, dark-skinned beauty with a $25,000 per month apartment and an international travel itinerary. The body is found near the highway north of Boston, just before midnight on April 3rd. The autopsy by county medical examiner, Dr. Bernard McCafferty, is inconclusive. McCafferty finds no indication of the cause of death. He does determine, however, that Williams died around 8:30 that night and that she had nothing to eat for several hours before her death, findings that contradict the story told by the last person to see her alive, prominent cardiovascular surgeon Christopher Dillard.

         When the police question Dillard, he claims he ate a gourmet dinner with Williams and was with her until 10:00 o'clock the night of her death. Convinced that Dillard is guilty and anxious to advance his own political career, District Attorney Neil Harrington castigates McCafferty for failing to determine the cause of death, telling him he bungled the autopsy. He brings in a prominent pathologist from New York who finds evidence that Williams was strangled. Even though McCafferty questions the reliability of this new evidence, he decides to go along as payment to Harrington for saving his career years before when McCafferty's drinking problems nearly ended his career.         As Harrington and his assistant, Mayan d'Ortega, prepare to bring the case before the grand jury, Dillard retains Sheridan, hoping to avoid an indictment and save his career. Although Dillard swears he is innocent - he claims Williams's empty stomach resulted from bulimia - Sheridan has his doubts, especially after a shady Irish contractor offers him $200,000 to get Dillard off. Even when Dillard passes a lie detector test, Sheridan still presses Dillard for the truth. While drinking in a bar with his partner and Dillard, he says:  "You tell me you snuffed Williams or had her killed, I give you back your retainer and we walk out of here right now. We won't even pick up the bill."

         Unknown to Sheridan, the FBI believes Williams was a courier in an international drug trade aiding terrorist organizations. Suspecting Sheridan and Dillard of conspiracy and racketeering, the FBI obtains a court order allowing electronic surveillance and wiretaps of their phones. The fun begins when Sheridan discovers the wiretap through a source at the district attorney's office. Trying to force Sheridan into unethical activity, an FBI agent poses as a crooked client, only to have Sheridan pretend to be the most ethical attorney in town. He throws the crooked client out of his office, then proceeds to accept pro bono cases and turn down a lucrative settlement offer from an insurance company executive seeking a kickback.

         The height of absurdity occurs after agent Sheila O'Brien poses as a legal secretary and is hired by Sheridan & Buckley. When she learns from the office staff that Sheridan mysteriously disappears on Wednesday afternoons, she follows him, hoping to catch him in the midst of some serious impropriety. She is shocked and embarrassed to find that Sheridan spends his mysterious Wednesdays playing catcher for a semi-pro baseball team.

         While stating he has "utmost respect for the FBI," Reed still portrays the Bureau as unethical, narrow-minded bunglers, much like the agents depicted in John Grisham's novels, which Reed claims not to have read. "Back to the days of J. Edgar Hoover," he says, "they cut a few corners." When an agent once asked Reed for information on a client, he "wouldn't give them any information one way or the other."

         As in The Choice, the IRA plays a dominant role, as the FBI suspects Dillard and Williams of funding IRA activities. Reed portrays the IRA characters sympathetically, outwitting the FBI at every turn. "Some people call the IRA freedom fighters, others call them terrorists," he says. "The line is very thin."

         By focusing on grand jury proceedings rather than trials, The Indictment provides a fresh departure from the typical legal thriller. Even without the drama of cross-examination, the grand jury scenes move quickly. The suspense builds as the jury considers whether to indict Dillard; at the same time, the police uncover evidence pointing to a different suspect, one just as prominent as Dillard.

         As the book reaches a climax, the flaws in Reed's characters become exposed. They are forced to choose between doing the honorable thing or pursuing their self-interest. The ending neatly brings together the personal crises facing several characters, from the county medical examiner to the deputy district attorney.

         Criminal defense attorneys may take issue with many of Sheridan's tactics, such as forcing his client to take a lie detector test or surreptitiously obtaining confidential information from the district attorney's office. Although Reed has been criticized before for taking liberties with legal situations, he makes no apologies. "You have to have a little panache, so I had to invent a lot of stuff." Like movies, Reed explains, a novel has to move. Reed warns lawyers, however, not to read his books to learn trial tactics. "I always said that doctors don't watch MASH to get tips on surgery," he says, laughing. "At least, I hope they don't!"