Michael Bowen Putting Lipstick on a Pig

Putting Lipstick on a Pig

Michael Bowen

Poisoned Pen, Jul 2006, $24.95

ISBN: 159058287X

Attorney Mackenzie Stewart calls Indiana lawyer Reppert "Rep" Pennyworth with bad news that peer Vance Hayes is dead. Seriously responding Rep asks Mac what is the bad news; as serious, Mac informs Rep that Vance had selected him to do the eulogy. Rep tells his wife Melissa he detested the nasty odious Vance, who tried to destroy Rep's legal career. Rep learns that Vance died when his snowmobile broke through thin ice in the Wisconsin Dells. Law enforcement assumes Hayes committed unconscious suicide because of an inability to cope with diabetes.

Two years later Rep is in Milwaukee looking into whether his Indianapolis based law firm should open an office here. Colleague Walt Kuchinski sends Vietnamese-American court reporter Sue Key to him over a photo of her in a calendar "Pretty Girls Smoking Cigarettes; the woman insists she agreed to the picture, but the background was altered to make it look like she smokes, which she never has. A letter signed by Vance to Sue's mom mentioning Kuchinski opens Rep's eyes as it sounds like the dead rat did a nice thing. Intrigued he takes Sue's case that leads to the heart of Milwaukee's Hmong community, but soon uncovers evidence that Hayes was murdered because of doing that good deed.

This is a fascinating Pennyworth legal thriller that though it has deep interesting insight into trademark and copyright law and litigation, in many ways is more an investigative thriller. Rep feels some guilt as his lousy eulogy two years before the Key case haunts him though he believes his words fit the nasty Hayes. The whodunit contains terrific icy twists that will send readers spinning for his two previous appearances (see SCREENSCAM and UNFORCED ERROR).

Harriet Klausner