Law and Addiction

By Mike Papantonio

Waterside Productions     2019

296 pages     Thriller

Lots of books are advertised as “torn from today’s headlines.” But Law and Addiction actually is. 

Here is the summary:

“One week before Jake Rutledge is scheduled to graduate from law school, he receives the devastating news of the death of his fraternal twin, Blake. What makes this death even more terrible for Jake is that his brother died of a drug overdose. Until hearing of his death, Jake had no idea his brother was even using drugs.

When Jake returns home to Oakley, West Virginia, he takes a hard look at the circumstances of his brother's death. In the five years Jake has been away for his schooling, his hometown has drastically changed. Because of the opioid epidemic and the blight it has brought, many now call Oakley "Zombieland". Jake can see how his town's demise parallels his brother's.

Undeterred, the newly minted lawyer takes on the entrenched powers by filing two lawsuits. Jake quickly learns what happens when you upset a hornet's nest. The young attorney might be wet behind the ears, but he is sure there is no lawyer that could help him more than Nick "Deke" Deketomis and his law firm of Bergman/Deketomis. Deke is a legendary lawyer. When he was Jake's age he was making his name fighting Big Tobacco. Against all odds, Jake gets Nick and his firm to sign on to his case before it's too late.”

Jake is an appealing protagonist. He is modest, unassuming, and trusting. He is willing to accept the advise from Deke Deketomis, the lawyer who has appeared in Papantonio’s other novels, Law and Disorder and Law and Vengeance. Jake is also ambitious, because of his willingness to take on the “Big Three” drug companies while at the same time taking on a smaller local case for his high school “crush.” Jake soon realizes that the role of the lawyer is essential in cases such as these. “What was rarely acknowledged was the unofficial oversight role that was increasingly filled by lawyers, Without the potential threat of legal action, important checks and balances wouldn’t exist, especially in light of increasingly lax government oversight.”

My feelings about the plotline, the characters, and the writing is similar to that of the Publisher’s Weekly reviewer: “Readers, however, will have to look past wooden characters, the stilted dialogue, and the statistical information dumps to get to the novel’s well-intentioned core. Papantonio makes a passionate if clumsy case for the need to do more to fight opioid addiction.”

It is certainly a timely book. Just yesterday, the Purdue Pharma bankruptcy was front page news as word that the Sakler family, owners of the largest manufacturer of opioids, had raided the company coffers when they realized that the company was going down. And in Sunday’s New York Times, Nicholas Kristoff had a heartbreaking editorial about babies in West Virginia who are born addicted. Fourteen percent of babies born in West Virginia are born exposed to drugs and another five percent more are exposed to alcohol—that’s about 20 percent of all babies born in that state.

Papantonio was on the cover of the July 1 issue of Publisher’s Weekly. He is certainly carving a niche for himself in the legal procedural genre.