Law and Addiction: A Legal Thriller by Mike Papantonio

Law and Addiction: A Legal Thriller. Mike Papantonio. Waterside Productions.  April 2019. pb, 312 hp.; ISBN: 9781939116468.

Opioid addiction has become a national crisis!  More cases of overdose fill the news on a weekly basis.  Police regularly carry and administer Narcan for overdosing addicts.  Meanwhile, as Mike Papantonio has so carefully and deftly delineated in this fictional account of reality, attempts to deal with the problem on a local and national basis continue, attempts to stem a raging flood of addiction and death.

Jake Rutledge is a new lawyer who lost his twin brother to this horrifying disease.  Jake and Blake had a favorite term they used with each other about having each other’s back.  Now Jake is determined to carry out his promise because of his grievous loss.  Having no money and no connections isn’t exactly a wild card in legally pursuing the sources and markets that are part of the mass distribution system of selling opioids.  However, Jake’s got guts and high-caliber intelligence to get his search going. So he begins by suing two companies that sell massive amounts of drugs to little known small towns in and around what is known as “Zombieland.” 

He then connects to a highly successful lawyer with a dynamic record of experience in suing Fortune 500 companies.  They begin by suing companies who have made a killing (literally and figuratively) in West Virginia and Ohio.  Readers will be riveted to the course of each court phase and the wiliness of Jake and Deke, his attorney second chair, in challenging big shot attorneys.

Readers, however, won’t be ready for the methods used to suppress and then shut Jake up.  No spoilers here.  Suffice to say, Jake meets Blake’s former girlfriend who is now addicted to Oxycontin and helps her through her gritty efforts to withdraw from her addiction.  He himself is about to undergo empathic thoughts and feelings after hoodlum attempts to bribe his efforts fail.

The reader also meets several characters who deal and distribute drugs, individuals who are caught innocently in the dragon net of illegality and can’t get out to survive!  

All in all, the reader can anticipate the ending but that’s only after brutality and other machinations have all failed to stymie Jake’s efforts.  Mike Papantonio has penned a necessary legal thriller that everyone should read.  The question readers are left with is “Where do we go from here?”  Highly recommended contemporary fiction!

Law and Vengeance: A Legal Thriller by Mike Papantonio

Law and Vengeance: A Legal Thriller. Mike Papantonio. Select Books (NY). September 2017. 256 pp. ISBN #: 9781590794364.

Gina Romano works for a high-powered lawyer firm, Bergman Deketomis.  They take only the toughest cases that involve large corporations and invariably involve government departments.  Their most famous cases involve corporations dumping chemical waste into rivers and causing, sadly, devastating cases of cancer for years to come.  Of course, taking on such cases involves attracting danger in different forms and also requires the best legal minds to not only take on but also win such cases.  These lawyers, including Gina, love the danger and the daily challenges of each case. 

The case Gina and her firm are presently focused on involves the design and production of a gun, the Sight-Clops, which has a definite problem when used in high humidity conditions.  Investigating this “mistake” winds up with Gina’s boss, Angus, dead and Gina almost dead from an automobile accident.  The description of the accident immediately notifies the reader that some big guns are after Gina, Angus and their law firm, opposition that will do whatever is required to get Gina and Angus to back off.  Of course, no surprise here as it doesn’t work; if anything, as Gina begins her long, long recover, she is determined to use the time to intensify her search for Angus’s killer.  A whistleblower is the source of the leak about the failed product but what are the chances for such a snitcher to survive?

Mike Papantonio is a lawyer and so the plot of this crime thriller is credible, fast-moving but not unrealistically so, and demonstrates a passion for justice that still exists for those legal minds who have not become too jaded from experience.  Law and Vengeance is a quick read because of its constant action-packed pages and interesting characters and issues.  Enjoy the read and you’ll want to Mike Papantonio’s other novels!

Law and Disorder: A Legal Thriller by Mike Papantonio

Law and Disorder: A Legal Thriller.  Mike Papantonio. Select Books. September 2016. 352 pp. ISBN #: 9781590793671.

Like the author, Nicholas “Deke” Deketomis is a skilled trial lawyer and talk radio show host.  The novel opens with a dramatic scene in which a young woman, suing a large pharmaceutical company for allowing the sale of a drug, dies right in front of the court after the Judge’s decision to not allow her story as evidence in a class action lawsuit against the drug company.  Deke’s law firm had six good witnesses to take to trial on this matter but now he’s got five and he’s looking for evidence that will unequivocally burn through the defendant’s “lawyered-up” and powerful strategies to defeat Deke’s lawsuit.

The plot then moves to a seeming sub-plot in which a coach of a woman’s team at a Southern Pentecostal Church receives a letter threatening exposure for sleeping with a minor fifteen-year-old teen.  The alleged perpetrator fakes a suicide hoping to con his wife into forgiveness and prayer, but the Pastor in charge of this church has different plans.  For one thing, this is one of those popular mega-churches making enough money from televised sermons and their in-person weekly services to make them a wealthy business.  The Pastor is also supporting a former Senator who is planning a comeback and who is stupid enough to ignore the fact that he is a tool in the Pastor’s grand strategy for even more success in the political world.

The remainder of the novel is about the machinations of the court, lawyers, Judges with a partisan preference, pharmaceutical companies whose only vision is making money minus caring about patients who die because of their poisoning drugs, and what it takes to achieve success in modifying the choices made by these drug companies.  Illegal methods are deemed perfectly appropriate to obtain pivotal evidence to use against the defendant drug company.  Religious leaders are not above destroying anyone who opposes their glorified status.

Most of what is in this novel reflects the way the law and businesses operate, but some of it goes over the edge with authorial license.  Still we are left with a ripping tale that has enough twists and turns to keep the reader flipping the pages and left with somewhat an education that is both informative and shocking!

Nicely plotted, with spunky, intelligent characters, Law and Disorder… is a terrific read sure to please those who love the legal thriller genre!