Book description
Attorney Rep Pennyworth has the client from hell.... Charlotte
Buchanan, author of a mystery of no particular merit, contends her 1997
novel was stolen and used as the basis for a 1999 film. She wants to
sue. Rep would blow her off, but Charlotte is the daughter of the CEO of
Tavistock, Ltd., the firm's major corporate client. So, aided by his
literature-addicted wife Melissa, Rep files suit. By return mail comes a
death threat, a grisly version of “Hold Your Tongue....” Then, in talks
with the film's director, Hollywood legend Aaron Eastman, Rep discovers
the outline of a bizarre scheme to destroy Eastman's credibility-and
that of his films. Hoosiers Rep and Melissa aren't prepared for the
larger licenses granted to political powerhouses, but they're quick on
the uptake and soon armed.... Let other lawyers chase power, prestige,
and billable hours; despite his secret fondness for corporal-punishment
videos and chat rooms, Reppert Pennyworth has found a soothing backwater
handling intellectual property work for an Indianapolis firm-until a
plagiarism suit rocks his world in ways he couldn't have imagined. At
first Charlotte Buchanan's claim that Point West Studio's In
Contemplation of Death rips off her justly unheralded suspenser And Done
to Others' Harm seems ludicrous (her list of similarities between the
two is a perverse classic of vanity). But when Rep and his wife Melissa
notice one resemblance too many, the case rapidly heats up. Point West
head Aaron Eastman, amiably dismissing Charlotte's argument while he's
in the Midwest scouting locations, is set up in a phony drug bust,
apparently by Rep's own client. Charlotte's father Tyler, the CEO of
behemoth Tavistock Ltd., is threatened by a hostile takeover by
buccaneering Tempus-Caveator. Eastman's claim that his last mega-budget
film, Red Guard!, was done in by ballot-fixing at the Oscars is backed
up by still another screenplay that purports to reveal the whole
scandal. And Rep, ever seeking the quiet life, can't back out of this
circus because Charlotte's already discreetly blackmailing him about his
taste for spanking, and his billing partner is about to find out too.
Much merriment at the expense of attorneys, writers, publishers,
filmmakers, and fetishists. This time, though, Bowen (Collateral Damage,
1999, etc.) gets so carried away with gorgeous plot complications that
the result is a perfect paradise of dropped stitches, the first mystery
in many a day that should have been longer. Mike Bowen, a trial lawyer
practicing in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is the author of numerous mystery
novels, including Screenscam (2002), which introduced Rep and Melissa
Pennyworth. Bowen has been a member and moderator of panels at several
Bouchercons and has made presentations at numerous other mystery-related
events. He wrote the entry on The American Legal System for the Oxford
Companion to Crime and Mystery Writing, and was a member of the panels
that selected the winner of the 1995 Edgar Award for Best Mystery and
the 1996 Edgar Award for Best Critical or Biographical Work. Bowen
graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1976. While at Harvard,
he served on the Board of Editors of the Harvard Law Review, and was a
member of the winning team and was named the best oralist in the Ames
Competition (moot court). Bowen lives with his wife, Sara Armbruster
Bowen and their younger children, John, Marguerite and James, in Fox
Point, a suburb of Milwaukee.
