To say that Harrison J. Walker [known to one and all as “Jaywalker”: “he’d dropped the Harrison part as too pretentious and rejected Harry as too Lower East Side”], a member of the New York criminal bar, likes a challenge is a vast understatement. But when a judge appoints him to defend a teenage boy who has been charged with murder, it would seem too big a challenge even for him. There are three eyewitnesses who will testify that they saw Jeremy Estrada shoot a boy only a few years older than himself between the eyes at pointblank range, and despite the fact that Jaywalker’s acquittal rate is about 90%, an acquittal in this particular case might be too daunting a task.
Jay’s background is this: Fifty-two years old, a widower for a dozen years, he has a daughter, had been a DEA agent, and had been suspended from the practice of law about five years previously; now reinstated, he has no law office he can cell his own, and no support staff. But he has promised the boy, his mother and his twin sister that he will do his best, and he will do no less than that. A self-described “uncompromising obsessive-compulsive” who had ”won cases and lost cases , . . no one – no one – had ever accused him of not doing his best.” And it doesn’t hurt that he has the ability to virtually mesmerize a jury.
So he spends most of the ensuing days and nights with little or no food or sleep, completely immerses himself in the case, interviewing all witnesses even when it entails flying to Puerto Rico and back mostly on his own dime. [By the end of the trial many months later he has been paid a little more than $1200 by Jeremy’s mother.] If anyone can win this case, dealing as it does with young love [there is a stunningly beautiful young girl involved], teenage bullying so seemingly endemic in our society, questions of intent and self-defense, it is Jaywalker. A terrific courtroom thriller, laden with suspense and humor in equal measure, this is an exciting and completely satisfying novel, and it is recommended.
