Home »
The Rule of Law is worth a reader’s time
Book Review
By Derryll White
Lescroart, John (2019). The Rule of Law.
To live outside the law you must be honest– Bob Dylan
This novel is Macintosh Toffee to any Lescroart fans. It sticks to you from beginning to end, injects one sweet memory after another, and brings forward thoughts long buried. The characters in ‘The Rule of Law’ are all creations familiar to anyone who has read any of the 18 Dismas Hardy novels Lescroart has penned.
Hardy was spawned in 1989 in ‘Dead Irish,’ a San Francisco lawyer as liberal as the city he practised in. The other central characters – Abe Glitsky, Wes Farell, Gina Roake – have also been constants in Lescroart’s books. As has San Francisco, the ‘city of angels’ and the very rich setting for these works of fiction.
A Texan, Lescroart has been attached to San Francisco since earning his English degree at Berkeley in 1970. He treats the city reverently and uses it to mirror many social changes and injustices that America continues to work through.
In this novel Lescroart focuses on the abuse of power in the political and legal jurisdictions and the mistreatment of immigrant workers. He puts the spotlight on what I.C.E. (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has created, fear and loathing in hardworking immigrant families. The short case studies Lescroart presents are shocking and call into question the effect and intent of many current U.S. policies.
The core of this story is the old saying “power abuses, and absolute power abuses absolutely.” A District Attorney is elected in San Francisco and he ignores the rule of law in favour of the practise of power. Lescroart also uses this novel to wrap up some loose ends of character development arising throughout the extended series. He does all of this in highly readable fashion. ‘The Rule of Law’ is worth the reader’s time.
********
Excerpts from the novel:
POWER – Hardy said, “I believe this prosecution to be unfounded and political. The way Mr. Jameson got this indictment, the way he sent his henchmen to make this arrest, the brutal and unnecessary force employed against my client, even Mr. Jameson’s personal appearance here smacks of prosecutorial misconduct. The district attorney should not be permitted to taint any7 potential jury pool by making inflammatory and frankly false statements about my client to further his own vindictive, personal, political agenda.”
I.C.E. – “I’m afraid not. The presumption is that you’re in this country illegally and therefore that you don’t have the same rights as a citizen would.”
This is just so wrong. You guys are so wrong. I’ve got a good job here. You can check. Parnelli’s Winery. I’m the vineyard manager there.”
“We did check. What do you think we’ve been doing all day while you’ve been in here? But Mr. Parnelli had no papers on you, either. Neither did Mr. Bosche down in Napa, who was your reference for Parnelli. Oh, and your social security number is for a guy named James G. Cooley, who died in Boise, Idaho, in 1991. I’m afraid we’ve got nine ways from Sunday, Rigoberto. I could have you on a plane to Mexico by the end of the week and nobody would blink or think twice about it. And I’d be that much closer to my bonus. You understand me?”
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself.”
– Derryll White once wrote books but now chooses to read and write about them. When not reading he writes history for the web at www.basininstitute.org.
