Levine, Paul: Solomon vs. Lord

Bantam Books © 2005, 547 pages [amazon]

The opposing counsel are as compatible as vinegar and water: Victoria Lord's a by-the-book prosecutor, freshly minted from Yale Law, while Steve Solomon is Jimmy Buffet with a law degree, an exasperatingly irresponsible rogue with a reputation for skirt chasing and playing by his own rules. When the two wind up on the same side of the aisle, defending the not particularly broken-up widow of Charles Barksdale, sparks inevitably fly. The Barksdale murder trial is a high profile case of Klaus von Bulow proportions: Charles and his trophy wife were members of the local aristocracy. But another case has an even greater hold on Steve Solomon's attention, his battle for custody of his semi-autistic eleven-year-old nephew Bobby, whom Steve had rescued the previous year from the clutches of his drug-addicted, abusive sister.

The Barksdale murder trial is a high profile case of Klaus von Bulow proportions: Charles and his trophy wife were members of the local aristocracy.The debut novel in Paul Levine's Solomon and Lord series is a sweet romantic dramedy. Though it's clear enough from the get-go where Solomon and Lord are headed in their relationship, you'll want to stick around to watch their jousting and to find out how their legal crises are resolved. The plot has a few small holes I'd have liked patched (and Bobby is unlikely to be reciting passages of the Aeneid in Greek unless he translated them from the Latin himself), but this enjoyable legal cozy bodes well for the future of the series.

(The  second installment in the series, Deep Blue Alibi, is due out in February 2006. Click here to read an article by Levine about the series, which is partly based on his own experiences as a trial lawyer and husband.)

Tags: book reviews, books, Paul Levine, Solomon vs. Lord