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.

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