The Best People: A Tale of Trials and Errors

By Marc Grossberg

Greenleaf Book Group     2019

378 pages     Legal Procedural

I love all the places I get to visit from my easy chair when I read novels. This week I got to visit Houston, for better and for worse through The Best People. This is the Houston of legal maneuvering and judicial corruption in the early 2000s. It is the Houston of wealth and the country club, and many fascinating characters. It is the Houston of one really interesting restaurant named Eleganté, which would be fabulous to visit someday (if it were real).

Paddy Moran is the main protagonist. He is a  former cop and a newly-minted lawyer who comes to Houston to make it big. He carefully watches the big-time lawyers as he makes his way connecting to the right people at the right times. It is obvious from the outset that his ambition is going to get the best of his morality.

A second narrative concerns Pilar Galt, a young single mother, who with a bit of luck and a lot of intelligence and skillful maneuvering, has risen from the barrio and met and married the richest man in town. You are aware from the beginning that Paddy and Pilar are going to follow a collision course to their doom. The novel proceeds to that pivotal moment in time. As a matter of fact, the last chapter is called “The Denouement”, which, by the way, is one of my favorite words.

There are a lot of characters, a lot of plot devices, and a lot of legal maneuvering, making the reader wonder who The Best People really are. Certainly Paddy gets his just desserts, but the denouement makes one wonder what lessons he has learned. Many reviewers called it a social satire, and I would definitely concur with that analysis. Even the title is tongue-in-cheek. One of my major take-aways is that greed and corruption are always with us, in Kalamazoo, in Houston, and in Washington. The Houston Chronicle review mentions: “His book acknowledges a naked truth about the Bayou City: it would be a lot less interesting if people weren’t willing to do whatever it took to get ahead. After all, they don’t call it ‘Hustletown’ for nothing.”

The Best People is an intense read. It involves a lot of concentration on the part of the reader, and I needed to finish it before my mind got overcome with Thanksgiving grocery lists.  One of my major take-aways is that the author knows the city and its people intimately and is willing to expose its weaknesses. After all, Marc Grossberg has lived in Houston his entire life and has had a more than a 50-year career as a lawyer in the city.  His knowledge is deep and his sense of irony is extremely strong.   

Here is an interview with Marc Grossberg on a San Francisco television station. Marc Grossberg’s website.