Every professional thrown in contact with the public has at least one client who's, to put it charitably, challenging. But the husband-and-wife attorney team of Joe and Lisa Stone have managed, in "Petty Lettie" VanSandt, to have landed an international gold medal champion. Irascible, tattooed, litigious, paranoid, antisocial and capricious—and it goes downhill from there. Fortunately, Joe has a patient mien, which turns out to be both the source of affection and affliction in The Jezebel Remedy, the fourth novel from Virginia Circuit Court Judge Martin Clark.

As proven in his New York Times Notable debut, The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living, Clark has a practiced ear for the subtlety and nuance of everyday existence. While the lawyer couple clearly have affection for one another, Joe's wife is getting twitchy after 20 years of "community center Zumba classes, flannel, mismatched silver, lukewarm champagne and box steps every December 31, matted fleece bedroom slippers and sex so mission control she could count down the seconds between her husband biting her neck and squeezing her breast."

When the Stones' cantankerous client turns up dead just days after amending her will for the umpteenth time, both Joe's unflappable demeanor and Lisa's near occasion of adultery set the stage for a series of events that could find them disbarred, bankrupted or worse. It appears that a seemingly useless formula for a compound called "Wound Velvet," left among the deceased woman's estate, has more value than her executor (Joe) could possibly have known, to the degree that a multinational corporation is willing to do whatever it takes to secure the patent . . . even if they have to crush the Stones to do it.

Unlike many legal thrillers, The Jezebel Remedy doesn't turn on high-tension courtroom theatrics to make its impact, though it's plenty clear from the legal proceedings documented in its pages that Clark knows his way around the bench. Instead, he crafts a portrait of fine but flawed humans who find themselves unexpectedly thrust into the deep end of a system where the law can be either a life raft or a dead weight, depending on who gets to make the final judgment call.

 

This article was originally published in the June 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Clark (The Legal Limit) spends his days as a Virginia circuit court judge, which explains why he is able to portray the inner workings of the legal system with ease and dexterity. It also accounts for why his latest effort is only the fourth book the author has published in 15 years, making his name an unfamiliar one to many legal thriller readers. However, this fast-paced and delightfully unpredictable tale of Joe and Lisa Stone's legal battles on behalf and because of their eccentric client, animal hoarder and would-be-inventor Lettie VanSandt, may accomplish much toward making Clark's a household name. Not only do the frequent plot twists keep the reader glued to the page, but Clark's depiction of life in rural Virginia and the depth and sensitivity of his character portrayals—particularly that of Lisa Stone's struggles with the ups and downs of her marriage—make the book memorable for much more than its clever legal machinations. VERDICT Recommend this book to fans of Scott Turow and John Grisham, then don't be surprised when they come back looking for more. [See Prepub Alert, 12/14/15.]—Nancy McNicol, Hamden P.L., CT

Clark, whose Southern legal thrillers (The Legal Limit) feature a unique blend of intricate plotting and comedy, stumbles in his latest about the fight over a mysterious, and potentially lucrative, chemical compound. Joe and Lisa Stone are an attractive pair of married lawyers in Martinsville, Va., known for their fairness in helping out the townspeople in all manner of disputes. One of their frequent clients is a "legal hypochondriac" and cat lady named Lettie VanSandt, who calls 911 to complain so frequently that the dispatcher has compiled a "Best of" CD of her ravings. VanSandt files endless lawsuits and patent claims, but when her trailer explodes after a visit from representatives of a sinister pharmaceutical company, Benecorp, it seems as if one of her crackpot inventions, a skin balm, may have actually been valuable. As the Stones wade deeper into the case, they each compromise their integrity in an effort to combat a well-funded opponent as skilled at manipulating the legal system as they are. The central plot is thin, the subplots sap the novel's momentum, the resolution depends less on legal wrangling than luck, and the dialogue lacks Clark's previous punch: "Great googly moogly... what a hodgepodge of colorful lies. It's a bushel basket's worth of deceit and half-truths." Clark's concoction could have used some more tinkering in the lab. (June)