Rogue Lawyer

1.
 
     My name is Sebastian Rudd, and though I am a well known street lawyer, you will not see my name on billboards, on bus benches, or screaming at you from the yellow pages. I don t pay to be seen on television, though I am often there. My name is not listed in any phone book. I do not maintain a traditional office. I carry a gun, legally, because my name and face tend to attract attention from the type of people who also carry guns and don t mind using them. I live alone, usually sleep alone, and do not possess the patience and understanding necessary to maintain friendships. The law is my life, always consuming and occasionally fulfilling. I wouldn t call it a jealous mistress as some forgotten person once so famously did. It s more like an overbearing wife who controls the checkbook. There s no way out.
     These nights I find myself sleeping in cheap motel rooms that change each week. I m not trying to save money; rather, I m just trying to stay alive. There are plenty of people who d like to kill me right now,  and a few of them have been quite vocal. They don t tell you in law school that one day you may find yourself defending a person charged with a crime so heinous that otherwise peaceful citizens feel driven to take up arms and threaten to kill the accused, his lawyer, and even the judge.
     But I ve been threatened before. It s part of being a rogue lawyer, a subspecialty of the profession that I more or less fell into ten years ago. When I finished law school, jobs were scarce. I reluctantly took a part time position in the City s public defender s office. From there I landed in a small, unprofitable firm that handled only criminal defense. After a few years, that firm blew up and I was on my own, out on the street with plenty of others, scrambling to make a buck.
     One case put me on the map. I can t say it made me famous because, seriously, how can you say a

John Grisham is the author of twenty-eight novels, one work of nonfiction, a collection of stories, and six novels for young readers.

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE WASHINGTON POST AND NPR

Terrific . . . inventive . . . John Grisham still makes it look easy. Maureen Corrigan, The Washington Post

Sebastian Rudd is . . . a kind of twenty-first-century Philip Marlowe . . . with a blunt, rude, gravelly poetic wiseguy voice. Benjamin Percy, The New York Times Book Review

Deeply engaging and entertaining . . . [Grisham finds] intense drama in the little skirmishes that play out across our legal system every day. Charles Finch, USA Today

Grisham has taken a step in an intriguing new direction. Janet Maslin, The New York Times