Illegal

Will relevance spoil Paul Levine? Probably not. As ILLEGAL proves, he still leans toward stories featuring very untypical lawyers. But here, his topic is as timely as any he’s ever approached. And if this isn’t his best novel to date, it certainly is his most noteworthy. Attorney Jimmy Payne — “Royal” Payne, as he’s known to most everybody — is a mess. Once renowned for his support of the underprivileged and unrepresented, Payne is now divorced, aching from the death of his son, and can’t seem to appear in court without falling into an emotional rage. What’s worse, he’s been targeted by a police detective to participate in a sting to bring down a crooked judge who almost shoots Payne when he offers the judge the arranged bribe. Now, with his career in tatters and five grand skimmed from the sting bribe in his pocket, he decides it’s high time to skip town. Meanwhile, in Mexico, Marisol Perez has scrapped together all the money she has in the world to pay an untrustworthy coyote to transport her and her 12-year-old son, Tino, across the border and into California. The clandestine plans start to go wrong almost immediately, and she and Tino are separated. Marisol ends up in a halfway house intended to hide illegal immigrants and eventually haul them off to farms or factories that rely on cheap, undocumented labor. Tino is left in the desert, and makes his way into Los Angeles. Previously, his mother instructed that if he made it into California and needed help, he was to seek out the man whose name is on the business card he keeps in his shoe: J. Atticus Payne, Esq., or Jimmy Payne. Tino and Payne eventually connect, and Tino convinces him to help locate his mother. They decide to retrace her steps from when she and the boy were separated. Their travels take them from the nightmarish stash houses just north of the California/Mexico border to the farmlands of the San Joaquin Valley. Along the way, Payne (and the readers) learns of the abuses the illegals suffer at the hands of human traffickers, day-labor employers and others who exploit their desperation. Chief among them is Simeon Rutledge, whose huge produce empire depends upon the labor of hundreds of illegal workers.   Unfortunately, Levine’s weaknesses are what keep ILLEGAL from being a major fictional statement on illegal immigration — one of several hot-button topics in politics today. He paints most of his characters in broad strokes, and while this has worked well for earlier works, it tends to diminish the urgency of the topic here. He never quite gets a handle on whether Tino is a boy wrestling with his emerging manhood or just an irritating kid. Payne, Tino and most of the other characters resort to wisecracks too often and seem to strain under the weight of the issue's relevance. Stylistically, Levine is way too fond of sentences in italics to indicate internal thoughts and observations. And his pacing gets awkward as he tries to keep all his characters active. This is especially true in the climatic chapters where Levine rushes to add backstory details when he should remain with the immediacy of the action.   Then again, the scenes and stories relating the abuses heaped upon the illegal immigrants are some of the most disturbing you are likely to read — all the more so because they are not only true, but very likely the barest minimum of what actually happens.   Levine promises more from Jimmy Payne. And that’s good news, especially if he continues to tackle weighty and relevant issues. With a bit more subtlety in his characters, Levine just might end up producing works that are not only entertaining, but highly important. —Alan Cranis Buy it at Amazon. OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR: • THE DEEP BLUE ALIBI by Paul Levine • KILL ALL THE LAWYERS by Paul Levine • SOLOMON VS. LORD by Paul Levine • TRIAL & ERROR by Paul Levine