A Malleable Truth
Soon to be Available to Purchase!
Do our compulsions mandate and justify the manipulation of truth? Why does our legal system reward the manipulators and promote the compulsions it purports to protect us against? How does death and addiction affect our perception of the truth? Those are the central questions of the courtroom drama A Malleable Truth.
Luke Redding, an alcoholic Southern California newspaper advertising salesman, is fired on Christmas Eve. Was he drunk at work after lunch with a young female intern, or was he fired in a cost-cutting move? Judge Roger Cronin, whose wife attended rehab meetings with Redding to cure a Vicodin addiction, must decide whether Redding was discharged for misconduct and whether he had an irresistible compulsion to use alcohol. A Malleable Truth resounds with courtroom action featuring technological treachery, shocking admissions, riveting cross-examinations, and a judge struggling to retain control of witnesses, reporters, and his own emotions. The novel moves from Palm Grove, where the Reddings’ country club life collapses along with their marriage, to a sexually charged Los Angeles courtroom, and to a San Francisco where the contrast between the employed and the unemployed was never so obvious and so unnoticed. Told in a taut, no-holds-barred manner, with earthy dialogue, biting humor, political intrigue, courtroom wizardry, and meticulous plotting faithful to the complexity of its characters and the legal process, the novel seeks to peel away the masks all of us employ to reveal the truth obscured by the hypocrisy.