I grew up reading courtroom thrillers by authors like John Grisham and Scott Turow and watching legal dramas like L.A. Law and Ally McBeal. Those kind of stories fell out of favor for a while, but I’m feeling like they are BACK. The Local by Joey Hartstone was the story of a small town patent lawyer who suddenly finds himself in the middle of a high stakes criminal defense trial. Check out my review of The Local!
The Local by Joey Hartstone
To be published by Doubleday on June 14, 2022
Thanks to the publisher for providing a copy of the book for review.
What is the Local About?
The East Texas town of Marshall is a place revered by patent lawyers for the court’s adherence to speedy jury trails and massive punitive payouts.
Marshall is flooded with patent lawyers, all of whom find work being the local voice for the big-city lawyers that need to sway a small-town jury. One of the best is James Euchre.
Euchre’s new client is Amir Zawar, a firebrand CEO forced to defend his life’s work against a software patent infringement. In a heated moment during the preliminary hearing, Zawar threatens the judge in court.
Later that night, the judge is found murdered in the courthouse parking lot. All signs point to Zawar. He publicly threatened the judge, he was staying at a house near the courthouse, he has no alibi. Moreover, he is an outsider, a wealthy Pakistani-American businessman who stands accused of killing a powerful white Federal judge in a small Texas town.
Zawar claims his innocence, and demands that Euchre defend him. It’s the last thing Euchre wants—Judge Gardner was his good friend and mentor—but he reluctantly agrees. With the help of a former prosecutor and a local PI, Euchre must navigate the byzantine world of criminal defense law in a town where everyone knows everyone, and bad blood has a long history.
The deeper he digs, the more he fears that he’ll either send an innocent man to death row, or worse, set a murderer free.
Review of The Local
I really love a good courtroom drama. I like the wrangling between the prosecution and the defense, the storytelling aspect of opening and closing statements, the crafting of a case.
The Local takes that familiar John Grisham formula: scrappy small-time lawyer in a small town who finds himself in the center of a case with huge stakes. It’s a formula that works.
James Euchre, or “Euchre” as everyone calls him, has a nice niche for himself. He serves as local counsel when big city lawyers come to the small East Texas town of Marshall to file and defend patent lawsuits.
But suddenly, one of Euchre’s new clients is accused of murder. The man is an outsider who seems doomed to be convicted. Instead of hiring an experienced criminal defense lawyer, he wants Euchre to defend him.
All of this is a bit unrealistic, but it works. Zawar and Euchre are two underdogs you can’t help but root for. Euchre has a plan to defend Zawar: just figure out who DID commit the murder.
I really enjoyed this. Euchre, the narrator, has a wry and interesting voice, and he was a character I enjoyed spending time with. I don’t know if this is the first in a series, but it could be!
Interesting Facts About The Local
I thought Joey Hartstone might be a lawyer, but he’s a TV writer who worked on The Good Fight, so he knows his way around a legal drama.
I didn’t know that Marshall, Texas, actually WAS a haven for patent lawsuits.” Just as the book portrays, patent holders used to have broad leeway as to where they could file their lawsuits alleging patent infringement. And many of them flocked to the “rocket docket” of Marshall, Texas.
But (cue suspenseful music) in 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that patent infringement lawsuits must be brought in the district in which the defendant is either established or has a regular place of business. So that was the end of that.
Tell me in comments: do you like courtroom dramas and legal thrillers?