Legal thriller struggles with legal technicalities

At first I had assumed that Canadian author Douglas A. Schmeiser was trying to emulate John Grisham with a Calgary-based legal tale. After all, Schmeiser is a professor emeritus of law at the University of Saskatchewan. It says so right there on the back cover. He should know what he’s talking about when it comes to the law.

He really should know the law to begin with.

I have to admit that it was really disappointing to start reading A Settling of Accounts, especially in the very beginning of the book. It hardly takes Schmeiser very long to set up one of the most unbelievable scenarios when it comes to a criminal case: that a lawyer would go to court to defend someone without knowing absolutely everything that there is to know about the claimant.

Here, the main character, a legal eagle named Jeff Philips is defending Paul Shafer on a rape charge. It’s important to note that Philips is not only a criminal lawyer; he also practices real estate law. As the story progresses, one must wonder if he also does wills, acts as a notary public, and validates your parking too. It’s kind of ridiculous that he does both. Certainly at some point he should realize that specializing in one kind of law is the way to go.

But that’s neither here nor there. Within the first few chapters, while he’s sweating over the details of his client’s case the night before the trial starts, he goes to a bar for a relaxing drink. There, he meets a nice lady and has a romantic rendezvous with her. All is fine and well until he shows up at court the next day and discovers, lo and behold, that his tryst was with the very same accuser in the case.

It’s at this point that Schmeiser loses more credibility than Grisham ever did in 25 or so novels. You, the reader, spend the rest of the 350 pages wondering what the author and the main character were thinking.

Still, there’s something to be said for the mindless dialogue, the razor thin chapters (trying too hard to achieve what Dan Brown mastered in The Da Vinci Code) and the sheer idiocy of what might be a fictionalized version of the Canadian criminal justice system.

I laud Schmeiser for his efforts to put a potboiler legal thriller down in print. He got this far, so maybe he can get closer to The Firm or The Runaway Jury on his next time out.