THE JUDGE'S LAWYER

In Sobel’s legal thriller, a CIA agent turned Miami defense attorney is tasked with defending a judge who inexplicably murders a prominent Cuban figure.

In 1981, Tony Gannon is a defense attorney in Miami, a city infamous for its gritty violence. In awkward, formulaic prose typical of the entire novel, the author lets the reader know that the protagonist is not unequal to its challenges: “The streets of Miami were not for sissies. But Anthony Gannon was no sissy.” Indeed, for two years he was a CIA field operative stationed in Chile during the brutal coup that resulted in the death of its president, Salvador Allende. If that’s not enough of a tough-guy credential, Tony also pacifies a driver engulfed by road rage by calmly brandishing a gun. He’s assigned a very high-profile case: A respected judge named Richard Stephen Wentworth has murdered attorney Rodolfo Rodriguez, a “Cuban superstar” famed for his courageous opposition to Castro. Wentworth is a difficult client—he confesses to the crime and refuses to either defend himself or offer a motive. Chris Fox, a figure from Tony’s past as a spy—she’s a woman he rescued in Chile—is now a reporter; she helps him determine the reasons behind the judge’s seemingly senseless crime. The plot is painfully unhurried and often travels back in time to Tony’s CIA days in sequences that are only thinly related to the principal story. The reader is buried in questionably relevant subplots, and the novel’s conclusion leans on canned therapeutic notions of forgiveness and the “ecstasy of redemption.” Sobel’s command of the legal niceties of the work is expert, as is his knowledge of the histories of Cuba and Chile—this is not a novel that suffers from a deficit of meticulous research. However, there is a lack of gripping drama and disciplined narrative.

A wending tale that never fully develops into a compelling story.