Bloody journeys through history, with murder as the guide

By Dick Adler, who reviews mysteries and thrillers for the Tribune. A collection of his reviews and essays is due out this fall from Poisoned Pen
Published August 21, 2005

The Mayor of Lexington Avenue

By James Sheehan
0-9767442-1-X
Yorkville, $14.95 paper

Because of his obvious ambition, Jack Tobin earned the title "The Mayor of Lexington Avenue" from childhood friend Mikey Kelly growing up in New York City. Tobin is now a hotshot trial lawyer based in Miami, and his friend, a reformed alcoholic, has a borderline mentally retarded 26-year-old son named Rudy who has been on Florida's Death Row for 10 years and is facing imminent execution. Rudy had been convicted of murdering a young woman in a politically manipulated trial where flimsy and falsified physical evidence was allowed to influence the verdict and, later, the appeal process.

In James Sheehan's powerful debut legal thriller, which in its attitude toward the law reads like "To Kill a Mockingbird" on steroids, Tobin takes on the task of keeping Rudy alive, mostly to pay off some old debts to Kelly, who has since died. Tobin finds himself up against a small-town Florida legal establishment where favors are routinely traded at the expense of truth, and where police corruption has become an art form.

Several people involved in the case meet violent deaths, and Tobin's opponent--a publicity-hungry Miami lawyer named Jimmy DiCarlo, called a "gangster wannabe" by a wise old attorney--sees the new trial as a chance to further his own ambitions.

Sheehan, a veteran trial lawyer in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, knows how badly the justice system can function, and he writes about its shortcomings in clean, exciting prose that never detracts from the drama of his story.

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