Alan Dershowitz reviews a new book in today's New York Times, "In The Shadow of the Law" by Penn Law professor Kermit Roosevelt. I read the book a couple of weeks ago, and liked it. It's a lawyer novel. Associates and partners at a big DC firm, a death penalty case and a corporate liability case, and a bunch of characters anyone who's spent any time at a law firm will recognize. What really works well in the book is that it gets you inside the law firm world, and has a lot to say about the tradeoffs people need to make and the pressures they feel and how the firm can really envelop the lawyers who work there. There's a lot of stuff along those lines that I found resonated with the other stuff I've been writing. And he creates some very real-seeming characters who you start to care about and want to keep learning about. So it's very well done in those respects. Too often I have trouble getting through novels, maybe because the third-person narrator just generally doesn't grab me, and I get bored. But I stuck with this one long enough to get engaged, and it was worth it by the end. I ended up reading the last seventy-five pages while waiting for a subway that never came -- and didn't even realize how long I'd been waiting until I finished the book. So I feel like that's an endorsement. It's a novel. If you're a law student, you'll relate and find it engaging, I think. I recommend. But don't necessarily take my word for it. The first chapter's on the NY Times page. And, he's doing a book reading at a bookstore in Greenwich Village called Partners & Crime this Wednesday at 7:00. I'm planning to go check it out. I already miss hearing law professors lecture, so I figure it can help fill that void... :)