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Fiction, Reviews

‘Media Justice,’ by Dennis Carstens

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The print media and national networks ran the same basic theme the next day. It was almost as if they were taking their cue from Melinda’s show. In a way they were. She was becoming a significant source for their stories, so they could start with the lame disclaimer, “It has been reported that…” Of course, this is totally unprofessional and unreliable, but it did provide cover for them. They could point to someone else and truthfully say whatever they reported had been reported elsewhere first.

Dennis Carstens is a poor writer, but an excellent storyteller. He badly needs a good editor to fix his prose and punctuation, but he has spun a riveting tale in Media Justice that had me changing my evening plans in order to see how it all came out.

Unfortunately, he also lost me as a reader. More on that below.

22-year-old Brittany Riley is a widowed, single mom. She has a strained relationship with her domineering mother, but depends on her for child care when she’s working out her frustrations by partying with friends. Being a mother can be tough, but Becky, her two-year-old daughter, is her pride and joy, and she dotes on her. And lately she’s met a man, Bob Olson, whom she thinks might just be Mr. Right…

Then one morning she wakes up to find Becky missing from her room. Bob has also vanished. Brittany panics, terrified of her mother’s anger, so for ten days she (stupidly) pretends nothing’s wrong. She searches for Bob and Becky in the daytime and parties with her friends at night to ease the strain.

When the truth comes out, the county sheriff’s office is helpful at first. But gradually they grow suspicious. This mysterious Bob Olson seems to have left no trace. Nobody ever saw him; nobody seems to know him. It’s looking more and more as if Brittany herself is a baby killer and a liar. When hunters find Becky’s body in a river, Brittany is soon in jail, charged with murder.

So Becky’s mother goes to defense lawyer Marc Kadella. It’s clear that the state’s case against Brittany is in fact circumstantial and fairly thin. But public sentiment is another matter. A local legal reporter has turned the case into her personal crusade, and her point of view becomes everyone’s point of view. And there are crazies out there… It all works up to a shattering climax.

The great strength of the Marc Kadella books is their realistic portrayal of the less glamorous side of the legal profession. There’s a real sense of authenticity in these stories. And the picture Media Justice offers of how “journalism” (especially TV “journalism”) filters facts and manipulates public opinion is genuinely horrifying.

I can always put a book down if I need to, but this one was harder than most.

And yet, I’m done with the Marc Kadella series. The author shows considerable laziness, in my opinion, in falling back – not once but twice – on a hoary entertainment trope, a phenomenon quite rare in the real world – the “murderous pro-lifer.” Using it once in a book I could perhaps forgive as a labor-saving shortcut. But doing it twice strongly suggests malice (as Marc Kadella might say in court), in spite of conservative moments in the story. This guy hates us. I’m confident he doesn’t want someone like me as a reader.

Too bad. I’ll miss him.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Desperate Justice,’ by Dennis Carstens

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Dennis Carstens is not a very good prose stylist. His diction can be awkward, even confusing, and his punctuation is best described as whimsical. But I like his characters, he poses very challenging moral problems to the reader, and he’s not politically doctrinaire.

At the beginning of Desperate Justice, Minneapolis attorney Marc Kadella is enjoying an upswing in his business fortunes. His success in his last big case has brought in needed clients. But when a prominent local defense attorney asks him to come on to defend his client’s co-defendant in a linked case, Marc is suspicious. Still, he takes the job, and soon regrets it. He and his client have been set up to take a fall, and Judge Gordon Prentiss – whom we remember with distaste from the last book – does not hesitate to take his personal rancor out on Marc’s client, who goes to prison.

So Marc is astonished when Judge Prentiss is himself charged with murder, and asks for Marc to defend him. Marc has no objection to representing a guilty man (and Prentiss looks guilty as sin), but he considers him a complete sleazeball. Which, the reader soon learns, is entirely correct. Perhaps the man ought to go to prison on general principles.

Desperate Justice is a kind of a diffuse story, which heads off in several directions before bringing it all together in the end. But I very much enjoyed the ethical dilemmas raised. What does “presumption of innocence” really mean? How do you defend a man you despise? How do you respond when even the good guys lie to you?

Stories of moral ambivalence can be corrosive and depressing, if they’re done nihilistically. But the Marc Kadella books never fall into nihilism. They ask honest questions, leaving the reader to draw judgments.

The politics seem pretty moderate to me, but the very fact that Democrats in Minnesota get criticized at all (Republicans come in for it too) is a breath of fresh air.

Cautions for language, sexual situations, and themes of extreme perversion.

Fiction, Reviews

‘The Key to Justice,’ by Dennis Carstens

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I’ve been reading the later books in the Marc Kadella series of legal thrillers (set in Minneapolis), and enjoying them with some reservations. So when I got a deal on a package of the first three books, I bought it. Not sure what I was getting. I had the idea the first books might be a little clumsy. Instead I found that The Key to Justice, the opening novel, was remarkably good and wickedly entertaining.

The book opens with Jake Waschke, an honest, respected Minneapolis police detective. He’s half-brother to the governor’s chief aide, a troubled young man whom he has protected all his life. Now he faces a horrific problem. A knife-wielding serial killer is raping and murdering young women in the Twin Cities (including the governor’s daughter), and Jake knows his brother is doing it. So he selects Carl Fornich, a scumbag with a past rape conviction, and fakes evidence to get him prosecuted.

Carl’s brother comes to Marc Kadella for a defense. Marc is a struggling, small-time lawyer. He needs all the business he can get, especially because he’s involved in countersuing the US government in a tax case and it’s taking forever. Though the prospects of collecting a lot from Carl’s family seem small. But when Marc meets Carl, he’s convinced he’s innocent. If he is, that means the police are framing him. Which makes Marc mad.

In his Introduction, author Dennis Carstens informs us that one of his main motivations for writing the story was to dramatize the un-glamorous side of the practice of law. The long hours, the tedium, the difficulties in getting paid, the official arrogance that has to be swallowed. And that element was in fact one of the things I’ve liked about the books all along.

But to be frank, the later books have gotten a little formulaic. This first one is genuinely original. Lots of surprises and twists, and very dark irony. Carstens isn’t a great prose stylist (and he has a real problem with punctuation), but he can tell a heck of a story.

Also, thanks to his stinginess with character description, I’ve never known what the beautiful Maddy (Marc’s investigator, later his girlfriend) looks like . Now I know she’s tall, brunette, and blue-eyed. Good to know.

Recommended, with the usual cautions.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Fortuitous Justice,’ by Dennis Carstens

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I continue to follow Dennis Carstens’ Minneapolis-located Marc Kadella series of legal mysteries. I also continue a kind of love/hate relationship with the books. The writing doesn’t impress me a lot, but the storytelling is good, and I generally like the characters.

Marc Kadella, as you may recall, is a Minneapolis attorney. He is now engaged to Maddy Rivers, the uber-hot private detective. In Fortuitous Justice, we pick up several plot threads, which had appeared to be tied up, from the previous book, Twisted Justice. That book involved a group of former Minnesota Vikings cheerleaders who’d formed a prostitution ring, and who found themselves way out of their depth when they became a security risk to some of the richest – and most ruthless – movers and shakers in Minnesota politics (which means, in case you’re not familiar with my state, Democrats. It’s not stated in so many words in the book, but that’s the way it is).

At the end of Twisted Justice, Burt Chayson, a local political fixer who knew too much, was reported dead, an apparent suicide. But now the police say murder, and they have their eyes on one of the Housewife Hookers, Hope Slade, the last person seen with him. Hope had enough on her plate already with prostitution charges and public humiliation. Her husband has left her. Now she’s facing Murder One. She goes to Marc Kadella for defense.

The investigation will be complicated, really scary hired guns will come to town to shut people’s mouths, and the final resolution will be a surprise.

As a mystery, I thought Fortuitous Justice was pretty good. I was annoyed by too many typos (a common problem these days, alas), and by Carstens’ habit of inserting paragraph breaks at unexpected places in the midst of chunks of dialogue, leaving the reader wondering who’s talking now.

I was also peeved when one unpleasant character was identified as a member of the “far right religious bunch.” That peeve turned to utter confusion as the character was later identified as a Democrat. (Insert image of Leonard Nimoy here, with one eyebrow cocked: “Highly illogical.”) Honestly, I think the author just lost track.

Not a great book, Fortuitous Justice was entertaining and fun. Cautions for language and mature themes.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Twisted Justice,’ by Dennis Carstens

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I liked the first Marc Kadella novel that I read, Cult Justice (by Dennis Carstens), even though there were some problems with the prose, because it had solidly conservative content and the story was pretty good. Reminiscent of a John Sandford book, but with a legal setting. The second one, Maddy’s Justice, I liked less, because it was all You-Go-Girl feminism (as I perceived it). So I figured I’d give Kadella one more shot with Twisted Justice. I have to say, he knocked it out of the park. For this reader.

Minneapolis lawyer Marc Kadella, along with his impossibly hot girlfriend, Maddy Rivers, attends a Christmas season party in a box at U.S. Bank Stadium. They were invited by Parker Crane, a friend who’s done well in financial services. During the party, Parker asks Marc about what a divorce would cost him, as his marriage is on the rocks. When he hears the answer, Parker comments that he’d be better off killing her. Then he takes it back.

Not long after, Parker’s wife Diana is stabbed to death in the parking garage of her lover’s apartment building. When the police check Parker’s cell phone records, they put him in that exact spot at the time of the murder.

Parker maintains that his phone was stolen, and he’s being framed. He retains Marc to defend him. As a defense attorney, Marc, of course, has no need to prove Parker innocent. He just needs to raise reasonable doubt. His obvious tactic is to construct a SODDI (Some Other Dude Did It) defense.

To do this, he looks into Diana’s personal history – and finds a wealth of alternative murderers. Because it turns out Diana, a former Minnesota Vikings cheerleader, had a nice little side gig going as a high-end call girl. And some of her clients were among the most powerful men in Minnesota, men with plenty of things to hide…

This book was a little more courtroom-centric than the previous book, with fewer shootouts and gunfights. That was fine with me. The courtroom scenes seemed authentic, and thus educational. As usual with this series, I found the character banter amusing, but not convincing. The problem with misplaced modifiers in the text, so evident in Cult Justice, was not noticeable here. I did note one badly cast sentence that should have been re-written, but in general the writing was okay. The final “surprise twist” didn’t surprise me, but was dramatically appropriate.

What I really loved about Twisted Justice was that it poked a well-deserved finger in the eye of the Minnesota power structure. That was genuinely sweet.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Maddy’s Justice,’ by Dennis Carstens

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I reviewed Dennis Carstens’ legal thriller Cult Justice a little while back. I didn’t think the writing was the best, but the characters and dialogue were interesting. Also, the book had a genuinely conservative theme.

So I bought the next book, Maddy’s Justice. And now I’m kind of confused. There was no visible conservatism in this story, except for a hatred of pure evil that pretty much anyone could share. The name change of Minneapolis’ former Lake Calhoun to the unpronounceable Bde Maka Ska is mentioned with unreserved approval. And the plot here is right out of the feminist playbook, aside from some of the jokes.

Attorney Marc Kadella and his boss, Connie, are retained to defend some real scumbags from a sexual harassment complaint. Marc and Connie are used to defending dirtballs, but these guys are worse than they appear. They’re a high-powered, politically juiced law firm with astoundingly predatory policies toward their female employees. It’s generally understood that promotion depends on delivering sexual favors, and even so, few women last long with the firm.

But that’s just on the surface. They are closely connected to an operation in the Caribbean that’s reminiscent of Epstein Island.

But wait, it gets worse…

In order to prepare his defense, Marc has to investigate his own clients, because he knows the plaintiffs’ lawyers will do that, and his clients aren’t cooperative. He turns his private eye friend Tony Carvelli, and his partner Maddy Rivers (who is Marc’s fiancée) loose on them. And the closer they look, the uglier it gets. And the more danger they’re in.

I had a couple problems with this book. The first is that Maddy is a genuine Mary Sue, a woman so beautiful, we’re told, that she once posed for Playboy, but also so lethal that she chews hulking thugs up and spits them out.

Also, the law office banter (similar to, though not quite at the level of, John Sandford’s cop banter) struck me as unrealistic. I say this having no actual experience of law office banter. But I have trouble believing that men and women working together in the business world today make easy jokes about sex with one another and take it lightly. I suspect that a large number of female employees are constantly on the hunt for microaggressions. And the men walk on eggshells.

The author’s besetting sin of misplaced metaphors was less on display in this book than in the last one (though it did show up), but comma placement was almost random all through the text.

So I didn’t like Maddy’s Justice as much as I liked Cult Justice. I don’t know if I’m going to go on with the series or not. But they’re one and one with me, so maybe I’ll give them one more chance.

Cautions for language, adult situations, and some really, really disturbing themes involving violence against children.

Fiction, Reviews

‘Cult Justice,’ by Dennis Carstens

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It’s a common complaint among writers, especially new writers, that editors will return a manuscript without reading past the first page or two. The writers feel they haven’t been given a fair trial.

What they don’t understand is that all editors, and many readers, have developed the ability to spot a clunker at a very early stage. Certain common mistakes immediately mark a writer as an amateur, and most editors have no time to give free writing lessons to every stranger who shoots a story over the transom.

I’m an editor in a small way, and I think I’ve been reading long enough to have some of that instinct myself. When I started reading Dennis Carsten’s Cult Justice, I spotted some caution lights, and didn’t think I’d stay with it for the long haul.

But in this case I was wrong. The prose has undeniable weaknesses, but the story grabbed me and turned out more engaging than I expected.

Ben Sokol is a self-hating Jew and committed leftist, a tenured professor at a state university in Minneapolis. He’s convinced his genius is unappreciated, and he envies more famous and wealthier colleagues. But one day he and a student decide that what society needs is more direct action. There’s been enough talk. It’s time to take violent action – by, for instance, robbing banks. For good causes, of course, though Ben will need to keep a percentage for his expenses…

He assembles a team of idealistic students who scout locations and plan carefully. Soon the news is reporting a series of lightning-fast bank raids, efficient, profitable and bloodless.

Until there is blood.

Meanwhile, Marc Kadella, Minneapolis attorney, is involved in the divorce case from purgatory. The couple seems like a pair of normal, prosperous citizens, but he can’t keep them out of each other’s faces, in one way or another. Until the wife is murdered, and the husband, Marc’s client, is arrested for her murder.

Who would think her death is actually related to the rash of bank robberies?

At the beginning of Cult Justice, I was (strange as it may seem) put off by how much I agreed with the politics. I’m so used to seeing second-rate literature from my side of the fence that I’m afraid I’ve grown prejudiced. And in actual fact, author Carstens does have weaknesses as a writer. One of his besetting sins is misplacing the object of a clause (I’m sure there’s a technical term for that, but I’ve forgotten it): “Having grown up on the East Coast, January was still too much for Ben to take.”

But the story was fun, and the characters were fun, in the tradition of legal and police thrillers. One element that intrigued me was the description – or lack thereof – of Marc’s girlfriend Maddy. Unless I missed something, we are never told what she looks like, not even whether she’s blonde, brunette or redhead. All we know is that everybody talks about her as the hottest thing on two legs. I thought that was a very creative way to present a character – until I found out this was the tenth book in the series, and author Carstens probably just assumed we already knew.

I thought the plot could have been tighter. I would have liked (for the sake of balance) to have had at least one sincere, intelligent leftist in the cast, rather than just scoundrels and dupes (it annoys me when leftist writers treat us that way).

Still, it was fun to read an engaging, fairly professional mystery written from a conservative point of view. You might like it too. Cautions for language and adult stuff.