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.