Gideon - 05 - Blind Judgement

Amazon.com Review

The best thing about Grif Stockley's mysteries featuring Gideon Page,
an Arkansas social worker turned lawyer, is their no-nonsense attitude
toward the business of being a lawyer. There are few big deals, no car
chases, and a minimum of courtroom theatrics--just ordinary people
trying to survive life's nasty menu. Blind Judgement has Page
commuting from Little Rock to his hometown of Bear Creek in the
Arkansas Delta to defend an African American accused of killing his
Chinese American employer, presumably on the orders of a wealthy white
man named Paul Taylor. Page has reason to hope the worst for Taylor:
they had been boyhood friends until the Taylor family cheated Page's
mother out of her property. But nothing turns out as expected, which
adds to the pleasure and believability. Other Page-turners available in
paperback: Expert Testimony, Illegal Motion, Probable Cause, and Religous Conviction.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.



From Kirkus Reviews

It's old-home week for Gideon Page when Latrice Bledsoe asks him to
come back to Bear Creek, Arkansas, to defend her meatpacker husband
Doss on a charge of taking money from Paul Taylor to kill Willie Ting,
the boss at Southern Pride Meats. Page is happy to take the case
because if he can get Doss to testify against Paul Taylor, he'll be
nailing the man who cheated his mother after his father killed himself.
Apart from a couple of ambiguous conversations, though, there's no
evidence against Taylor, and plenty (bloody knife, heavily alibi-ed
coworkers) against Doss. Anybody but Page (Illegal Motion, 1995, etc.)
would see other trouble signs, too: Doss refuses to take a lie-detector
test; the supposedly despised Taylor has a surprising amount of
popular support in Bear Creek; and Taylor's lawyer seems utterly
unconcerned about the trial. (He probably knows the novel will have run
most of its course by the time he'll need to show up in court.) But
Page, awash in youthful memories and content to neglect his
long-suffering girlfriend Amy Gilchrist for the dubious embraces of
high-school sweetheart Angela Marr--the man seems to take up with each
woman only to abandon her for the next--just can't keep his eye on the
ball; it'll be a miracle, and no thanks to his dazzled lawyer, if Doss
walks. A thimble-sized mystery interleaved with so many reminiscences
of the hero's adolescence you'll feel as if you're paging through
somebody else's high-school yearbook. Despite some incisive asides on
racism, sensitive Page's fifth case is his weakest