The Colour of Law

Mark Gimenez

Little, Brown, £9.99


The colour of law, in Scott Feeney’s world, is green – that being the colour of the hundreds of thousands of dollars he makes working for a top-drawer Dallas law firm where the pursuit of principle is put firmly behind the pursuit of profit and a perfect life.



With a premise like that, it is no surprise that the book’s advertising exhorts John Grisham to ‘move over’ – does any legal thriller nowadays not do that? – but with its pace and engaging tale, this novel is indeed mildly reminiscent of Grisham’s earlier works.



Feeney’s troubles begin when he makes a speech to his bar association recalling the spirit of Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird. Hearing this, and wrongly imagining that Feeney believes in Finch’s noble approach to the law, a local judge appoints the lawyer to defend a black, drug-addicted prostitute accused of murdering the son of a white Texas senator with designs on the White House.


Unable to get out of a case far from his usual workload, and alarmed that his client maintains her innocence, Feeney drafts in a former college friend scraping along the bottom of the criminal law barrel to help. But things start to get rough for Feeney when he comes under pressure to ignore evidence that may exonerate his client but condemn the senator to electoral oblivion. Suddenly, the colour of law is also black and white.


The allusions to Harper Lee’s award-winning book continue throughout – Feeney’s mother had urged him to ‘be like Atticus’, his daughter is called Boo, and there is the underlying theme of racism – but this is nowhere near in the same class. It is not hard to see where the plot is going from a long way out as Feeney’s materialistic life begins to unravel, while the middle of the book drags somewhat as he agonises endlessly over whether to do the right thing or the profitable thing, with countless allusions to his college days as a famed American football player.



At the same time, however, the story and writing are sufficiently winning to keep the pages turning quickly to the end, despite the awkward device of jumping occasionally from Feeney into other characters’ minds.



Homer Simpson once complained that he gave up on books after To Kill A Mockingbird gave him no practical advice on killing mockingbirds. There are no great insights to be had from The Colour of Law either, but it is still a highly enjoyable read.



Neil Rose