Saturday, April 19, 2008 12:29 PM
Blawg Book Highlighter #28: The Law of Second Chances
Florida seems to be a breeding ground for alligators and crime fiction writers.
John D. MacDonald. Carl Hiassen. Randy Wayne White. Tom Corcoran. Bob Morris. Tim Dorsey. All have helped to paint with words a dark side to the Sunshine State.
James Sheehan is one of the newer entrants into the increasingly competitive field of Florida crime fiction.
Sheehan writes from experience. He’s been a practicing attorney in Tampa/St. Petersburg, Florida, for 28 years, which of course means that he writes legal thrillers.
His 2005 debut, The Mayor of Lexington Avenue, came out to rave reviews. Booklist declared it a “top-notch legal thriller” and a “genuine literary achievement.” The Chicago Tribune called it “powerful,” saying it “reads like To Kill a Mockingbird on steroids.” Marilyn Stasio, writing for The New York Times Book Review, said, “Sheehan writes with bleak clarity when he’s sharing the dirty tricks of his trade in the harrowing trial scenes, but there’s a touch of the poet in his voice.”
It was in Lexington Avenue that Sheehan introduced Jack Tobin, a Florida trial lawyer “committed to justice for the innocent.”
Sheehan’s follow-up is appropriately titled, The Law of Second Chances. This time Tobin is presented with a death row case and he isn’t sure if he should take it. Why? Because he’s not so sure that the convict didn’t do it.
As the clock ticks on the convict’s life, a backstory develops out of a small-time robbery gone bad that brings Tobin’s past into play.
Says Karen Haymon Long of the Tampa Tribune: “Luckily, (Sheehan) thinks like a lawyer and writes like a writer. His stories roar along, transporting readers at a galloping pace.”
Sheehan used to write a blog called Slow Moving Dreams. In 2005, shortly after the release of his first book, Sheehan wrote: “In any writing you have to be true to yourself. There’s an old saying – write about what you know. I think that’s true.”
Read at excerpt from Second Chances at
http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage.aspx?isbn=9780312366308#Excerpt
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Randy Richardson is an author, humorist, former journalist, and a lawyer. His fiction debut, Lost in the Ivy, a murder mystery set against the backdrop of Chicago's storied Wrigley Field, won the Writers Marketing Association's “Fresh Voices” Book Award and the Illinois Woman's Press Association's Mate E. Palmer Communications Contest. He writes the Dad Libs column for SanityCentral.com and is a frequent contributor to Chicago Parent magazine. In his day job, he is an attorney for the Social Security Administration’s disability appeals branch. At night and during lunch breaks, he serves as president of the Chicago Writers Association (chicagowrites.org) and works on his second novel while a 4-year-old tugs on his legs. Visit his website at www.lostintheivy.com.
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