ALL RISE

Retired jurist Doughtie presents a twisty legal drama of nasty doings in northern Florida.

Judge Alva “AC” Cason sits on the bench of Florida’s Eighth Judicial Circuit, hearing and passing judgment on the miseries spilled out in the family division. Much of the business is sad but tedious: “He thought he could do this job in his sleep, but remembered he sometimes did just that, which was generally frowned upon.” Doughtie is having fun here, for AC is drawn as a warm and decent man, learned, confident and ethical, informed but not flouting. He is a rich character, as are the other principals, whose complexity gives the story its pleasing misdirection and color. Doughtie ably handles a number of strands—an increasingly ugly child dependency case, a crooked judge, rich folks ruining everything, a con man overstepping his moral boundaries and a surging romantic relationship between AC and caseworker—as he authentically engages the legal system. It is clear that Doughtie loves the legal profession, though he is not above teasing it: “Judge AC tried to exhibit the concerned expression of a person with hemorrhoids”; he revels in explaining courtroom minutiae with expository narrative that only feels forced when he takes it outside judicial business, as when detailing the con man’s tricks. Equal to, if not transcending, the legal aspects of the story is the love affair of AC and Vicky, sweetly and very physically presented, yet, thankfully, unlike the law, not minutely. Indeed, Doughtie keeps the tale quite everyday, avoiding the theatrical and extravagant, but allowing for him to give time pondering such elements as the Florida landscape that he loves as much as the law: turkey oaks and wiregrass, the rosemary bushes and tumbledown farms, the dozy inland river ways and the pencil factory that ate all the cedars. The final pages offer a dumbfounding surprise, and an emotional cliffhanger.

Doughtie has tendered an understated, sophisticated, revealing legal entertainment that leaves the reader wanting more.