Law and Disorder by Mike Papantonio, a Mysterious Review.

Review: Nicholas “Deke” Deketomis is an aggressive and accomplished, highly successful lawyer protecting the rights of the innocent while winning multimillion dollar lawsuits from the powers that be. But his law firm, based in the Florida panhandle where he lives with his wife and two children, may be facing its toughest case yet, in Law & Disorder, a legal thriller by Mike Papantonio.

Deke is the attorney for a nineteen-year-old girl, dying because she had taken birth control pills manufactured by a large pharmaceutical company. Although the company had been given proof that the pills have dangerous side effects, they continued to market the pills touting other benefits such as weight loss and clearing acne. The proof had been destroyed—or so they thought. The young girl died in the courtroom before the case ended. The trial judge dismissed the charges because there was no proof the pills caused her death. Deke was angry the way politics and corruption influenced what happened in the courtrooms and begins a quest to find those “lost” documents. Deke’s one abiding faith is that “good defeats evil and against all odds, good wins.”

Leaving a meeting one afternoon Deke is confronted by a man. He ignores and sidesteps away from the man but is later accosted. Deke thought the man was trying to kill him, so Deke reached in his pocket, brought out a ball point pen and stabbed him in the throat, killing him. A young man had taken pictures of the confrontation with his cell phone on the orders of the same men who had given the instructions to rough up Deke. Deke is arrested and charged with manslaughter, but after the pictures turned up, the District Attorney was all for making the charge murder.

The characters in this electrifying novel are so well developed that they appear to be real people. The storyline is interesting and informative about the framework surrounding local governments, especially the politics, judges, elected officials, and the like. Fans of legal thrillers will definitely enjoy Law and Disorder.

Special thanks to guest reviewer Betty of The Betz Review for contributing her review of Law and Disorder.

Acknowledgment: SelectBooks provided a copy of Law and Disorder for this review.

Law and Disorder

A Legal Thriller by Mike Papantonio