cover image Blind Judgment: A Gideon Page Novel

Blind Judgment: A Gideon Page Novel

Grif Stockley. Simon & Schuster, $21.5 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-684-81564-0

There's nothing slick about Stockley's books featuring Arkansas lawyer Gideon Page (Probable Cause; Illegal Motion; etc.), and that's a large part of their attraction. Told in the first-person present tense, the books take a pragmatic, no-nonsense attitude toward the work of being a lawyer. Stockley's latest has Page, a former social worker, commuting from Little Rock to his hometown of Bear Creek in the Arkansas Delta to defend an African American, Doss Bledsoe, accused of killing his Chinese-American employer, Willie Ting--presumably on the orders of a wealthy white man named Paul Taylor, whose offer to buy Ting's meat-packing plant was refused. Page has reason to think the worst of Taylor: they had been boyhood friends, but the Taylor family later cheated Page's mother out of her property. The first thing that Page discovers back home is that the balance of power has changed: Bear Creek is now 70% black and has a black sheriff and prosecuting attorney. Both seem convinced that Bledsoe is guilty of murder but are willing to deal it down to help nail Taylor. Confused by what he finds out about his family and quickly embarking on a troubling affair with an old girlfriend, Page at first fumbles his client's defense. And even his eventual success comes about through hard work and luck rather than courtroom theatrics--another reason to like this quietly effective story. (Aug.)