TWILIGHT OF HONOR

by Al Dewlen ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 13, 1961

Al Dewlen's best book to date certainly promises to be his biggest, as well as the likeliest candidate in the line-up to be identified as successor to The Anatomy of Murder. If, as in the earlier case, it can be said to be on distant terms with literature, it keeps in very close contact with the reader, elicits a maximal audience appeal through a courtroom drama, provides some fascinating legal shop talk, and attains real momentum and even terminal eloquence as a criminal case is processed from its ugly beginnings to its tarnished finish. Jess Hutcherson, a wealthy, popular figure in a small community in the Texas Panhandle, is murdered in a motel room by two young punks to whom he had given a ride-- Ray Priest, with a record of vagrancy and pimping, and Patty Sue, the sexpot he had married at 15, used, and possibly abused. Owen Paulk, who had given up criminal law at the death of his wife, is forced to handle Priest's defense which seems hopeless from the start: Priest is already ""ticketed to ride old Sparky""; the State has four prosecutors, a large slush fund with which they have been buying up witnesses, a slack Judge, and a jury made up of the dead man's friends, peers, and fellow Shriners. Many pressures are brought to bear on Paulk. His firm does not want to be ""embarrassed""; he himself does not wish to sully the image of the dead man for the sake of the living-his widow and children- and Paulk is forced to enter that ""twilight of honor"" when a knowing but necessary defense of the guilty may be ""destructive of the defender"" in the damage it entails. Still Paulk's obligation is to Priest, a sorry victim of the social wasteland that produced him, of the wife, who betrayed him, and now of a community more interested in retaliation than retribution..... It is an exciting story, exposes many of the more unsightly artifacts of the American scene, walks the thin line between legal rights and human wrongs, and maintains its hammerlock hold on the reader. Book-of-the-Month Club selection for January will assure a headstart.

Pub Date: Dec. 13, 1961

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1961

Categories: FICTION