She wiped her eyes, smudging more grime around her eyes. “I remember when you started here out of law school. You seemed different than the others.”
“I take that as a compliment.”
“But you’ve changed, David.”
“I’ve grown up.”
She shook her head. “You’re really just like them now. And they’ll own you soon. Once you make partner, they’ll own you.”
Browsing through my old reviews, I found one of my posts on the novels of S. D. Thames, all of which I had enjoyed quite a lot. I realized I hadn’t read any of his books in a while, so I did a search on Amazon. Turned out he hasn’t put out any more of his Milo Porter novels, but there was a stand-alone I hadn’t read, from way back in 2015 – Foreclosure. I read the book and it impressed me. Think John Grisham, but darker and grittier.
David Friedman is a tough, scrappy Jersey boy, fighting to make partner as a real estate lawyer with a big South Florida firm. As the book begins, he’s furious at being denied a promised partnership. It’s the bad economy, his bosses say.
But one of them offers him a deal – acquire real estate developer Frank O’Reilly as a client. O’Reilly is facing big litigation over a condominium foreclosure, and if David can bring him in and win the case by the end of the year (2007), he’ll get his partnership.
Of course, Frank O’Reilly is the slimiest developer in all of Florida (which is saying a lot), crude and corrupt and cruel-minded. But David knows he can deal with that. If he has to make some ethical compromises, tell a few lies, even ruin a few lives, that’s all part of the game.
But he has no idea what this case will cost him, nor how close it’ll bring him to losing not only his career, but his very life. Not to mention his soul.
Foreclosure is a Christian novel, but of the better sort – better than my novels in the sense that the Christian message is implied, not baldly spelled out. It is, sadly, the kind of book that often fails to please the Christian audience, due to frank language and dark topics. The kind of book Andrew Klavan is writing today, with greater success.
I assume that Foreclosure didn’t sell well, because author S. D. Thames seems to have switched to the light Milo Porter series, and doesn’t seem to have done any publishing at all since before 2020.
I hope he’s all right.
In any case, Foreclosure is an excellent legal thriller for the mature reader. There are occasional rough spots in the writing, but overall I liked it a lot, and recommend it.