Thursday 18 September 2014

Conflicts with Interest by Michael Ruddy

This book is about 'Defect Litigation'. A homeowner can sue the homebuilder if the house has a flaw in it. The homebuilder in this case is T.R. Morgan and his son Ryan Morgan. T.R. is mourning his wife's death and has developed a gambling addiction, or so the back of the book tells us, it is never really explored in the book. Enter Steve Sanderson, "a ruthless Bay Area lawyer" to sue T.R. Morgan for an imperfectly built house.

So we have the 'good guy' T.R. Morgan, and we have the 'greedy lawyer' Sanderson, who has an equally greedy associate whose main attributes seem to be her breasts and her ability to procure illegal aliens for Sanderson's ranch. We also have a bunch of people from the insurance companies, T.R.'s new girl friend and so on. 

Unfortunately, there was no character development. The plot moves along at the speed of a court case, if you've ever been involved in a court case you know what that is. The ending is not the explosive climax the back of the book promises us.