Illegal by Paul Levine

 

Illegal

By Paul Levine

Bantam Books

$22.00, hard cover, 367 pages, 978-0-553-80673-1 (2009)

 

Paul Levine is a former trial attorney and a talented writer. He has written Solomon vs. Lord and a couple of other books that feature lawyers doing unbelievably unethical and illegal things and somehow always coming out on top. These books were well received and featured the kind of characters that you might see on Boston Legal or Ally McBeal. If you like those shows, you'd like his previous books.

 

I didn't.

 

I'm glad that he decided to write Illegal which has a little more meat to it. The story centers around a trial lawyer named Jimmy Payne who gets in a little trouble and needs to skip town, but not before 12-year old Tino Perez robs him. Perez is in the country illegally and his mother, Marisol, needs his help. She had disappeared in her attempt to cross into the country.

 

Faced with the choice of staying and going to jail, or leaving and helping the kid find his mother, it's no contest. The trip takes Payne and his young side-kick Perez from Mexico to the site of Marisol's crossing into the U.S. Along the way, Payne learns first hand the dangers of illegal immigration, human trafficking and sexual slavery.

 

Levine does a good job of portraying the human suffering of those attempting to get into this country illegally. After Marisol and eighteen men, women and children are packed into a windowless white van, Levine describes some of her trip this way:

 

Marisol lost all sense of time. Inside the van, the air grew stale and unbearably hot. She felt queasy, forced herself to picture trees, swaying in a breeze. Remembered the Mexicans trapped in the trailer truck the summer before. If she died here, what would become of Tino?

Fight off the fear.

Across from her, an Indio woman struggled to her knees, changed something Marisol did not understand, and keeled over, facedown onto the filthy floor. Her lips frosted with white foam and her body twitched.

Marisol squeezed past two men, lifted the woman's head to help her breathe. Someone banged on the wall separating them from Guillermo, the driver. Someone else shouted in Spanish to stop, a woman is dying, but the van continued on.

A Honduran man tore apart the matting that covered the taillight assembly, then punched through a plastic casing and tore out the light by its cord. The pavement appeared through the hole.

Marisol helped carry the woman to the back. Two men held her face close to the opening, begging her to suck in the fresh air. Her body twitched then stilled, twisted into unnatural angles.

Women screamed. Men prayed. Others averted their faces, as if shamed to see the woman so exposed in death.

 

            This novel will do more than just entertain; it'll make you think. And any book that can do both, ranks high on my list.

 

Buy it on Amazon here.

Comments

[find the best divorce lawyer]

Its a good one friends buy the book and read it, its good ofcourse.

[TL Winslow]

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[divorce lawyers]

The book illegal is really very good you should buy it and read it.