CAPITOL MURDER

An Oklahoma lawyer takes his country-boy act to the Beltway, and does he ever dazzle those city fellers.

When Senator Todd Glancey is caught with his pants down—literally, on videotape, on C-SPAN—he sends for Ben Kincaid (Dark Eye, 2005, etc.). Jeeze Louise (Ben’s pet exclamation in time of stress, perplexity or whatever else), why me? Ben asks. Because the senator, who went to law school with Ben, recalls his smarts so vividly after 12 years that he prefers him to D.C.’s best and brightest. Glancey’s worried about potential sexual-harassment suits arising from the explicit nature of the C-SPAN tape. Before long, however, he has a much darker cloud hanging over his head. Victoria Cooper, the young woman with whom he erotically co-starred, is found brutally murdered in his senatorial hideaway. Although the combination of the corpse and the videotape may strike some readers as sketchy evidence, the cops seem to find it conclusive, and they unceremoniously cuff and haul the senator off to the pokey. With Murder One and the scary possibility of a death sentence hanging over him, will Glancey’s glance turn toward the Beltway’s celebrated pool of legal talent? Or will Tulsa Ben again suffice? Jeeze Louise!

Formulaic and tedious. While it’s probably true that court-lit still has a heartbeat, this case may cause you to wonder.