I didn’t like the last novel I read, C.J. Box’s “Three Weeks to Say Goodbye” (2009). If you think you want to read it, then don’t read this column, as it will spoil the experience.
A married couple months into adoptive parenthood learns that the teenage biological father of their daughter didn’t sign away his parental rights. His father, a powerful federal judge, now wants to be a granddad, it seems.
Judge Whoosit and son visit the couple. The judge violates the canons of judicial ethics once or twice. He threatens to throw his weight around if he doesn’t get his way. He offers to throw his weight around to facilitate and pay for a new adoption for the couple. He sets a date three weeks out for delivery of the child and arranges for law enforcement to watch their every move between now and then.
Thus, a novel issue is raised. The stage is set for a legal, tear-jerking, dispute-resolution process. Might there be a chapter on finding an ethical lawyer to zealously represent the parents? Others on trial strategy, discovery, procedural wrangling? Might we see skeletons from the judge’s closet ferreted out through proper channels?
Will we see subtle ethical lapses from a conscience-torn individual, as the judge micromanages his son’s case? Will private counsel insist the judge have independent representation when they discover the biological dad’s inner city gang connections?
Not so much. Box tells us the judge is so feared locally that no lawyer would dare take the case. So, with a political activist and a disgraced, drunken and suspended sheriff’s deputy as cohorts, the adoptive father spirals into a bizarre world of criminality, violence and pouty-whiny potshots at the judge.
Box has written best-sellers. He’s a good writer. And “Three Weeks,” though anathema to my wishful expectations, may be just the thing for some thriller-readers. I realize it’s only fiction.
“Three Weeks” proceeds thusly: This sitting federal trial judge, who aspires to be on the Supreme Court, murdered his own parents when he was a teen; married his then-girlfriend, who provided him with an alibi; had a son with her; and, when the son became of age, had the son help him murder her. This murder is caught on camera by an itinerant pedophile who roams from park to park, occasionally abducting and murdering children.
With negatives in hand, the pedophile owns Judge Whoosit and thus commits his crimes only in national parks. Coincidentally, the pedophile is on trial for murder in Judge Whoosit’s court as the adoption issue unfolds. The judge tricks the defense lawyer into discovering evidence that discredits the testimony of – imagine this! – the very deputy sheriff who is a childhood friend of the adoptive father. Which gets the defendant off.
The acquittal, though, is only part payment for the damning photos – which Judge Whoosit must acquire if he is to be appointed to the Supreme Court. The other part is the delivery to the pedophile of a baby girl. I swear!
Committing several felonies along the way, the adoptive dad and the suspended deputy save the day without the help of even one iota of legal advice. That the political activist and about a dozen others get killed during this three-week stint is but collateral damage.
Fortunately, it’s only fiction.
Vic Fleming is a district court judge in Little Rock, Ark., where he also teaches at the William H. Bowen School of Law. Contact him at vicfleming@att.net.