The hero, Hank Fisher, is a first-year criminal defense lawyer whose boss is killed soon after their two-person firm is hired by a female, U.S. Senator on a Congressional terrorism committee who is being blackmailed. We discover there are three rules of defense: ”Get paid up front, never give the money back, and if someone has to go to jail don’t let it be you.” But there are other things we learn too, such as how moderate Muslims view the Jihad as an internal war while extremist Muslims see the Jihad as a reason to kill anyone who isn’t Muslim, how biochemicals are part of today’s military arsenals and even something about how lobby organizations work. I have to admit it’s refreshing to read a noir story dealing with contemporary issues and referring to people like John Wayne Bobbitt and Valerie Plame. And the writing itself is as appealing as the somewhat hapless narrator: “I pressed my lips against her soft skin, losing myself in her perfume. By the time I opened my eyes, she was half-way up the steps to her townhouse.”

As a teenager Fisher’s older brother was killed while teaching him to drive. That loss reverberates with the current one and provides motivation for the narrator to stay with a situation in which he has little experience. We want him to succeed, just as we all need to succeed at those issues that define who we are. One of my favorite little touches is when an angry opponent (a jerk who is beating up the office cleaning woman) trashes Fisher’s apartment. The ultimate indignity is that the intruder rips out the last chapter of Raymond Chandler’s “The Long Goodbye” which the young lawyer had by his bedside and was anxious to finish. Now that, as any fan of the genre will testify, is criminal.