The Legal Limit

The Legal Limit
by Martin Clark

The Legal Limit
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Book Summary Information

Author: Martin Clark
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-07-08
ISBN: 0307268357
Number of pages: 368
Publisher: Knopf

Book Reviews of The Legal Limit

Book Review: A great read, summer or not!
Summary: 5 Stars

To call The Legal Limit "a summer read" does it an enormous disservice. It's my favorite kind of book: well-written, but not so much that the writing calls attention to itself; fast-paced, but not so much that you don't stop to ponder some of the deeper questions it raises. And those deeper issues are there -- questions of loyalty, morality, crime and punishment, and ultimately the difference between law and justice. Yes, it's a very compelling page-turner, but it's a lot more than that, too!

The plot is pretty straight-forward (and this is NOT a spoiler, since it's the first scene of the book): two brothers get into an altercation with a guy on a country road late one night and one shoots and kills him. Mason, the good brother, helps Gates, the bad brother, cover up the crime, and they each swear never to breath a word of what happened.

And then, of course, Gates can't keep that promise. Gates goes from bad to worse, and looking at a long prison sentence decides to frame Mason for the murder -- which puts Mason in a tough spot, because over the decade since the crime he's become a well-respected lawyer and district attorney who can't say anything about what actually happened or else he'd imperil his job, at the least. The proverbial rock and a hard place...and it gets more and more rocky as the case wends its way through the system and the walls close in around our conflicted hero.

In the introduction, Clark mentions that this is based on a real case he had to adjudicate. He succeeds in putting you "in" the story, where you have to consider what you'd do in the judge's shoes: you know Mason is innocent, and yet he's going to jail if you don't somehow intercede. The situation is riveting, the solution is surprising, and all I can say is that I'm glad it's not my job to make those kinds of decisions.

A really great read -- for any time and place, not just the beach!

Summary of The Legal Limit

Martin Clark?s most remarkable novel yet is the gripping, complex story of a murder cover-up that wreaks widespread havoc even as it redefines the concept of justice?a relentlessly entertaining saga that delves deeply into matters at once ambiguous and essential.

While Gates Hunt chose to fight his abusive father head-on, his younger brother, Mason, eventually escaped their bitter, impoverished circumstances by earning a free ride to college and law school. And while Gates became an intransigent, compulsive felon, Mason met and married the love of his life, had a spitfire daughter, and returned to his rural hometown as the commonwealth?s attorney. But Mason?s idyll is abruptly pierced by a wicked tragedy, and soon afterward his life further unravels when Gates, convinced that his brother?s legal influence should spring him from prison, attempts to force his cooperation by means of a secret they?d both sworn to take with them to the grave. And with his closest friend and staunch ally suddenly threatened by secrets of his own, Mason ultimately finds himself facing complete ruin and desperately defending everything and everyone he holds dear.

Intricately plotted and shot through with authenticity, The Legal Limit is a roller coaster of moral relevance. What should govern our actions when family loyalty challenges personal integrity, when the letter of the law defies its spirit, and when fate plays dice with our best endeavors?

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