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Falls the Shadow

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Overview

New York Times bestselling author William Lashner returns with a brilliantly twisty tale that probes the dark side of the law -- and man Unlike the rest of you, I cheerfully admit to my own utter selfishness. I am self-made, self-absorbed, self-serving, self-referential, even self-deprecating, in a charming sort of way. In short, I am all the selfs except selfless. Yet every so often, I run across a force of nature that shakes my sublime self-centeredness to its very roots. Something that tears through the landscape like a tornado, leaving nothing but ruin and reexamination in its wake. Something like Bob. --Victor Carl A beautiful young woman is dead, her husband convicted of the murder. In seeking a new trial for the husband, defense attorney Victor Carl must confront not only a determined prosecutor and a police detective who might have set up his client, but also a strange little busybody named Bob. Bob has the aspiration, one could even say compulsion, to help those around him.

Editorial Reviews

Payment in advance lures cheerfully selfish criminal defense attorney Victor Carl (who last fought the good fight in 2004's Past Due) to seek a new trial for Fran ois Dub , a charming French chef convicted of murdering his beautiful wife, in Lashner's fifth legal thriller. Like every case in every courtroom drama, Dub 's is more complicated than it first appears, involving secrets that could humiliate, if not bring down, half of Philadelphia society. Carl, who thinks Dub did it even as his partner, Beth Derringer, says otherwise, is further distracted by a new pro bono client he's taken on and a throbbing toothache that sends him into the less-than-tender hands of Dr. Bob, a dentist who takes a holistic approach by involving himself in every aspect of his patients' lives. Soon Carl's getting himself a new girlfriend, a new wardrobe, new dental work and a new set of troubles from the cream of Philadelphia high life. Lashner works overtime to amuse the reader, arming his tough-talking characters with jokes to spare, leading to a tone that's somewhere between Raymond Chandler and Chandler Bing. Toning down the relentless wisecracking might have helped sell the more serious parts of the book (would the victim's grieving mother really tease Carl about his missing tooth ), but the well-staged plot twists and Carl's amusingly amoral narration make for good beach reading. Agent, Wendy Sherman. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information. -- PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.

Author Information

Bio of William Lashner

New York Times bestselling author William Lashner is a graduate of New York University School of Law and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is the author of five previous Victor Carl novels that have been translated into more than a dozen languages. He lives with his family outside of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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Additional Info

Imprint

HarperCollins

Filesize

1010.61 KB

Number of Pages

528

eBook ISBN

9780061158902

Excerpt from: Falls the Shadow by William Lashner

Unlike the rest of you, I cheerfully admit to my own utter selfishness. I am self-made, self-absorbed, self-serving, self-referential, even self-deprecating, in a charming sort of way. In short, I am all the selfs except selfless. Yet every so often I run across a force of nature that shakes my sublime self-centeredness to its very roots. Something that tears through the landscape like a tornado, leaving nothing but ruin and reexamination in its wake. Something like Bob.

Take, for example, the strange happenings one night when I brought Bob to a bar called Chaucer's.

Chaucer's was strictly a neighborhood joint, prosaic as they come, except for the name. The narrow corner bar had rock posters glued to the walls, Rolling Rock on tap, a jukebox stocked with Jim Morrison and Ella Fitzgerald. It was the kind of bar where you drank when you weren't in the mood to put on a nicer pair of shoes.

"My, what a colorful establishment," said Bob as we stepped inside.

"It's just a bar," I said.

"Oh, it's more than that, Victor. A bar is never just a bar. It is like a watering hole on some great African plain, where all creatures great and small sit by clean blue waters to relax and refresh themselves."

"Don't get out much, do you?"

"Look around. Can't you see the cycle of nature revolving before your very eyes?"

I looked, but there wasn't much cycling to see. A quartet of college kids were laughing in a booth. A mismatched couple was arguing at the bar. An old man was nursing a beer and complaining to another old man, who showed little interest in anything but his Scotch. The usual weeknight crowd at Chaucer's.

We took a table by the window. I flagged the waitress, ordered a Sea Breeze for me, and looked at Bob for his order.

"J&B on ice," said Bob, "with a twist."

About right, I figured, the last part anyway. At first glance, Bob didn't appear to be worth a second. He was short, soft and pudgy, with heavy black glasses that slipped down his nose and made him look like a fumbling schoolboy. Even with a five o'clock shadow worthy of Fred Flintstone, there was something sexless about him. Women scanning the watering hole for men scanned right past Bob. Their gaze would catch on leering hyenas from South Jersey, on lummoxes from South Philly, on old lemurs with expensive haircuts, on empty chairs, but not on Bob. He was of less interest to them than the furniture. They knew the type right off: the guy who works to fit in, who doesn't make waves, who accepts the world as it is, the guy who watches television on Saturday nights because he has nothing better to do, the guy with a hobby. And they would be right, sort of. I mean, it turned out he did have a hobby.

"I used to fish as a boy," said Bob, after I asked what he did with himself after work. "Yellow perch, caught with fathead minnows. But with the condition of the Schuylkill, that's impossible here. So nowadays I simply try to help."

"You say that a lot," I said. "What exactly do you mean? Do you volunteer?"