March 28, 2017

Is This the End of Jake Lassiter?

Jake Lassiter has been in scrapes before. I’ve put the linebacker-turned-lawyer into lots of ethical, moral and physical jams.

Lassiter has had an affair with a woman while defending her gangster husband in court in MORTAL SIN.

He’s been charged with murder for allegedly killing his banker/girlfriend who was about to report him for stealing client funds in STATE VS. LASSITER.

Doing his own legwork defending his pal Steve Solomon in a murder case, he gets stomped by Russian mobsters in BUM RAP.

I sometimes feel guilty for handing Lassiter such a rough life. In a dozen thrillers, he has flirted with disbarment, death...and dangerous women. But now...oh now, he faces his greatest opponent yet: himself.

Thirty seconds after the jury returned its verdict, I decided to kill my client. 

That’s the opening line of BUM LUCK, which is just out today. Lassiter has just won a murder trial, successfully defending Miami Dolphins’ superstar Thunder Thurston, charged with killing his wife. Problem is, Lassiter believes his client is guilty and vows to do something about it. Rough justice. Vigilante justice.

Lassiter’s pals Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord are stunned. “You must have played football too long without a helmet, Solomon says, not realizing the nugget of truth embedded in the wisecrack.

Lassiter begins to suffer crippling headaches and memory loss. He’s even more irritable than usual. And his plan to kill his own client rattles family and friends. His bizarre behavior extends to his law practice. The State Attorney believes Lassiter bribed a juror in the Thurston murder trial. Lassiter’s denial – claiming he wanted to lose the case – gets him nowhere. A grand jury plans to indict Lassiter for bribery, even as he plots to kill his client.

Lassiter’s life gets even messier when he’s forced to represent an insurance company that refuses to pay the orphaned children of a deceased martial arts fighter. “Defending insurance companies is like fiddling with the thermostat in hell,” he complains.

In the course of the civil case, Lassiter crosses paths with Dr. Melissa Gold, a neurologist with a specialty in Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (C.T.E.). It’s the fatal brain disease afflicting retired N.F.L. players. Long-time readers will recall that Lassiter suffered numerous concussions as a football player, including one play in which he made the tackle, recovered a fumble, got turned around, and ran to wrong end zone. That earned him the unfortunate nickname “Wrong Way Lassiter,” something that followed him from gridiron to courtroom.

(For more on the origin of the “Bum Luck” story – just why did I put Lassiter in this precarious position? – please see “Losing a Friend to C.T.E. below”).

When pre-publication news leaked out about the plot, some readers wrote me, pleading not to kill Lassiter. “Are you insane?” one asked. “Why would you kill your meal ticket and my guilty pleasure?”

Well, it’s not as if I’d be the first author to knock off a main character. I suppose Brutus could have only wounded Julius Caesar, but that’s not the way it played out. Not to mention Hamlet, Macbeth, and both Romeo and Juliet.

But no spoilers here. I’m rooting for Lassiter to make it out of this jam and hope you are, too.

Bum Luck is On Sale Now
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Pre-Publication Praise for Bum Luck

"Paul Levine continues his trademark brisk pacing with timely storytelling and well-placed humor...‘Bum Luck’ is elevated further by teaming Jake with Steve and Victoria. Together, they make an unstoppable team - concerned about the law, but even more about people." - South Florida Sun-Sentinel

“Levine has crafted a gripping and often quite an amusing thriller with a surprising climax all of which is built around an intriguing cast of characters as it achieves an almost flawless rhythm.” - Bookpleasures.com

"Another winner. A taut and dazzling legal thriller and a sly and witty rumination on the meaning of justice." - Robert Dugoni, #1 Wall Street Journal and #1 Amazon bestselling author 

"Immensely entertaining. Paul Levine is among the best authors of legal thrillers, right up there with Grisham and Turow." - Lee Goldberg, #1 New York Times bestselling author 

“Funny and smart, two great additions to any mystery.” Goodreads 5-star review

Losing a Friend to C.T.E.

“For Don Russo (1946-2014) football player, rugby player, trial lawyer, friend”

In September 1970, on the first day of my first year of law school, while waiting to have my photo I.D. taken, I struck up a conversation with another student, Don Russo.

Both Don and I loved college football. As a sports writer, I had written about football. But Don had played. At the University of Miami, he’d been a small, speedy, fearless wide receiver. Going over the middle, he’d been knocked around like a pinball by linebackers 50 pounds heavier. We became fast friends.

Don had short stints with the San Diego Chargers and Miami Dolphins, but after realizing there were faster, larger wide receivers at that level, he settled into the practice of law. Over the next quarter-century, Don became one of the top plaintiffs’ personal injury and toxic tort lawyers in Florida. He also played rugby on an international level where it is simply not possible to compete without suffering head injuries, including concussions. Compete he did, fiercely and fearlessly.

Don was already showing early symptoms of the disease that would claim his life when the photo above was taken in 2011. The occasion was my appearance at Books & Books in Coral Gables for the launch of LASSITER. That’s Don on the left and famed trial lawyer Stuart Grossman on the right. We’d all been friends for 40 years. Don also attended my first book signing in 1990 for TO SPEAK FOR THE DEAD, as shown below. Yes, we were both much younger.

The end came slowly and painfully for Don, his family and friends. Frontal lobe dementia and A.L.S. with symptoms consistent with Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. He died three years ago this month.

It was then I decided that Jake Lassiter would have his own encounter with brain injury and potential C.T.E. After all, he’d suffered a series of concussions going back to high school in the Florida Keys, through his playing days at Penn State, and on the aptly named suicide squads with the Miami Dolphins.

By now, most readers are aware of the work of Dr. Bennet Omalu, the forensic pathologist who established the link between football head injuries and the fatal disease. You may have seen the movie “Concussion” in which Will Smith stars as Dr. Omalu and runs into the stone wall of deniers at the N.F.L.

The casualty list of former players with C.T.E. reads like an All Pro team. In fact, on one restless night in BUM LUCK, that’s the substance of one of Lassiter’s nightmares. 

In post-mortem tests of brain tissues, 90 of 94 former professional football players who had shown symptoms of dementia were revealed to have, in fact, suffered from C.T.E. 

In the last week, two living former NFL stars - Gale Sayers and Dwight Clark – were revealed to be suffering from symptoms consistent with C.T.E. (The gruesome fact is that a positive diagnosis can only be made post-mortem).

The more I researched, the more angry I became at the NFL for its shameful conduct in lying about the connection between football injuries and dementia. And when I get angry, so does Jake Lassiter.

Jake Lassiter always relishes a challenge. This time, I gave him one that might be too tough, even for the ex-linebacker with the hard bark and tender heart.

I look forward to hearing from you after you have a chance to read BUM LUCK.

Paul Levine

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