By Regina Wright
rwright@decaturdaily.com · 304-2439

A political cliché that also applies to the justice system is: That’s the reason. Now what is the real reason?

Author David Cauthen takes that premise and threads it through 437 pages of conflict fueled by human frailty that kept clients walking through his door during the 38 years he practiced trial law in Decatur.

The pressure cooker of rejection, deceit and greed explodes across the pages, drawing the reader into lawyer Penn Roman’s quest to clear his client and unite him with his 6-year-old daughter. Along with Roman, the reader will vacillate. Could the client be guilty?

A divorce case is the literary device and legal spider web that snares characters around the main character, surgeon Larry Brownfell. Like the spider’s captured fly, Brownfell flails at the center of the web and his outbursts of misdirected emotion entangle him.

The result is a charge of assault, assault with intent to murder and prime-murder suspect within weeks of walking into Roman’s office.

Divorce

He wanted a divorce and custody of his daughter. Brownfell reasoned divorce should be simple. He burst into a motel room and took pictures of his wife, Patti, in bed with another man.

The lawyer looked at the pictures and saw the problem. The man’s arm covered his face. Within hours, Patti produced pictures showing that she was beaten by the man she said was in her bed — Brownfell.

The story begins.

The ending is O. Henry.

And in-between is the interplay when people –– a bank president, real estate agents, a family practitioner, a nurse, an appraiser, a lawyer –– point their moral compasses to adultery and greed.

There are subplots of conspiracy, blackmail and theft. Complicating the story are spouses, and the only innocent, the child. She is a pawn in a chess game of marital revenge.

Cauthen manipulates these against the legal system’s peripheral characters. This interplay will surprise readers who have spent no time at what many loosely call the courthouse.

Legal thriller

The novel falls in the genre of legal thriller, but Cauthen has produced a page turner without resorting to offshore money stashes and gun running. He did that by taking an ordinary occurrence — divorce — that produces extraordinary emotions.

It is a good fast read and would make a good movie. The characters’ dialogue and the pace of the novel are visual.

“Absolute Justice” is the first novel Cauthen has published in what he hopes will be the Penn Roman legal series. He has working titles for two more, “Conscious Disregard” and “Thumbs Down.” Readers of the genre will say his first one is thumbs up.

For more about the novel
and Cauthen, visit his Web site, cauthenbooks.com.

The author will have a book signing Aug. 20 from 5 to 8 p.m. at Market Street Café and Deli in Decatur. He will serve light refreshments.

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