Misdemeanor Man: A Novel

Gordon Seegerman is a public defender whose somewhat lackadaisacal attitude toward his job is understandable--misdemeanors don't have the inherent drama of big-time felonies, and the arena in which Seegerman plies his trade is the criminal equivalent of small claims court--jaywalkers, graffiti artists, sidewalk spitters and willy wankers. It's one of the latter--Harold Dunn, arrested for exposing himself to an eight-year-old girl in the women's dressing room of a local department store--whose refusal to cop a plea comes at a very inconvenient time for our hero, conflicting as it does with his real career opportunity--performing with his Barry Manilow tribute band, the Mandys, in front of the Great Man himself.

There's more to Dunn than a dirty raincoat--he's an accountant with a charity called G.O.D., an ex-alcoholic who owes his second chance to the group, especially its founder, a saintly woman whose son, Dunn implies, has set him up as a patsy to cover his own sins, which run to embezzlement, shady real estate deals, and money laundering. That may explain why Dunn's being held in a high security area of the local jail, and why the prosecuting attorney--who happens to be Gordon's former girlfriend--stubbornly refuses a deal of any kind. Then a wealthy stranger bails Dunn out of jail, a witness in his case turns up dead, murder charges are filed against him, and Gordon suddenly has to act like a real lawyer. Schaffer tosses in a few subplots in case this one doesn't catch the reader's interest, but they don't do anything to pick up the pace. --Jane Adams