High-profile lawyer and legalist is the description that comes most rapidly to mind when hearing the name Alan M. Dershowitz. A professor at Harvard Law School and a noted appellate lawyer and columnist, he has represented such clients as Claus von Bülow, O. J. Simpson, Anatoly Shcharansky, Michael Milken, Mia Farrow, and Mike Tyson. But Dershowitz is also a bestselling author of numerous nonfiction and fiction titles.
He has published three novels featuring prominent defense attorney Abe Ringel. The first, Advocate’s Devil, from 1995, finds Abe defending a young basketball star accused of rape. The second, Just Revenge, has Abe defending a Holocaust survivor who takes revenge on the man who killed his pregnant wife, son, and extended family in Lithuania in 1942. Publishers Weekly praised the “dramatic and tragic events that frame the plot, and the intensity of [the author’s] moral argument” in that novel. In the just-published The Trials of Zion, Abe’s daughter Emma, a recent Yale grad in law, plans to help defend a young Palestinian accused of setting off an explosion that has killed several of the world’s leaders in Israel. Eventually Abe is drawn into the proceedings; he must win the Palestinian’s case or risk losing his daughter forever. Playwright David Mamet noted of this work that Dershowtiz writes “a real good rip-snorter” of a thriller. Booklist also commended this title, writing that Dershowitz “combines exciting action with courtroom drama and a lesson in the history and politics of the Middle East … [in] a thought-provoking page-turner.” (more…)
Scene of the Crime 