The Good Lawyer – Thomas Benignio

We are sometime in the 1980’s and Nick Maninno is a young lawyer starting out at the bottom defending prospective felons for the Legal Aid Society in the South Bronx. He’s good, but his growing reputation includes success with “sicko sex cases” with the latest not guilty verdict leaving a villain still on the streets, the victim suicidal and Maninno with his head in his hands.

His new batch of cases includes more promising, if high profile, material – a school aide accused of molesting three boys, and a janitor arrested for a series of rapes and murders. Maninno is convinced of the innocence of both and sets to work.

 he legalese flows thick and fast and Nick’s personal life gives him some potential conflicts of interest to deal with: his girlfriend, as well as being old-money rich and beautiful, is an assistant district attorney; and his Uncle Rocco is big in the New York mafia.

The plot becomes complex with interconnection between cases and even links to Uncle Rocco’s shady past. The cast list resembles a Dickens novel with lawyers, judges, clerks, policemen, witnesses, gangsters, crime reporters and even a mysterious stunning blonde. Their coming and going enables Benignio to mess with the head of the reader who doesn’t know which of these will prove significant later down the line as the plot twists and turns.

It’s a fast-paced page-turner and, with Maninno straying from the courtroom into vigilante territory, there is action as well as argument. Credibility is stretched at times (as is standard in the genre) despite the book being ‘inspired by a true story’.

It made for a fine thriller but I would have enjoyed it more if I had known more, or cared less about trying to follow, the intricacies of the US criminal justice system.