The Deal by Sabin Willett

At 7:00 am in a Boston boardroom, there's a disaster in the making. High in an office tower in the heart of the financial district, lawyers and bankers are fighting a deadline to close an $840,000,000 leveraged buyout. Under the pressure of the crowded agenda, no one notices that a zero has been dropped from the mortgage document. The papers are signed, cheers and applause roar from the boardroom--and the fuse of a time bomb is lit. When it explodes, there will be hell to pay. As the partners of Freer, Motley, the presiding law firm, will discover, they are collectively and personally liable to their client to make up the multimillion-dollar shortfall. And so begins an accelerating and dire chain of events. Freer, Motley's senior partner is found dead, and its brightest young associate is charged with murder. The firm needs a fall guy, and John Shepard, brilliant but arrogant--and recently passed over for partner--fills the role to perfection. Defending John Shepard in a Boston court is going to be a career buster. No one wants the job, and no one understands why Ed Mulcahy accepts the case, even if he is Shepard's friend--but they don't know that he's already in way too deep to walk away. On a par with Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent, The Deal is the most exciting new legal thriller from a first-time author to be published in years. Written by a young partner with one of Boston's prestigious old firms, it is an utterly authentic view of the city's judicial system, from the ex-con informants, paid for their evidence, to the district attorney who needs a conviction for the sake of his political career. It is also the compelling story of two young lawyers--a defendant and his attorney--realizing too late that they are up against an old-guard establishment more powerful than they could ever imagined. Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Weak characterizations, overblown prose and predictable plotting spoil Willet's debut, a legal thriller set in the rarefied financial and legal circles of greater Boston. The premise, though, is simple and sweet: as maverick attorney John Shepard closes the biggest deal in the history of Freer, Motley & Stone, no one notices that an error in the documents allows the recipient of the $840 million mortgage that supports the deal to pay it off with $840 thousand. The horrified partners learn that they may face hundreds of millions in malpractice liability. Soon the senior partner is dead, and Shepard is arrested for his murder. Two weeks from trial, Shepard fires his high-profile defense attorney and persuades his friend Ed Mulcahy, a litigator at Freer, to take the case. Ed does, and promptly loses his job. With little time to prepare, limited trial experience, a difficult client and Boston's legal and political establishment arrayed against him, Ed thus must win this case as much for himself as for his client. Willett fills the narrative with tired genre turns, such as how the stress of the trial draws Mulcahy and his assistant together romantically. His dialogue is equally cheap (a black youth: He a strong muhfucker. Wipped yo' ass; a P.I.: Shepid? I heard aboudim). Off the street and inside boardrooms and courtrooms, Willett's atmospherics seem authentic-he is himself a partner in a Boston law firm-but it's hard to accept the incredible confluences of incompetence and naivete from his cast of high-priced lawyers. An unsatisfying denouement proves a poor reward for those who hang on to see how the story's many loopholes are closed. Simultaneous Random AudioBook. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal A maverick lawyer in a staid Boston law firm, John Shepard has been bypassed for a partnership but is hanging on to close one last deal for the firm. This deal involves a $900 million loan, and the stakes are high. After the papers are signed, it is discovered that someone dropped three zeroes from the amount of the loan. Did Shepard deliberately let the error pass to get back at the firm and the mentor who failed to support his partnership? When Shepard's mentor is murdered and Shepard is arrested, he calls in an old debt from his friend Ed Mulcahy, whose criminal law experience is a bit rusty. Mulcahy gets to work, even though it means he may lose his job. The legal and financial detail involved in this complicated and convoluted thriller is occasionally dense, but Willett builds the suspense slowly and surely to a powerful climax. Highly recommended wherever legal thrillers are in demand. -?Dean James, Houston Acad. of Medicine Lib. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Booklist Proofreaders take heart: you've never overlooked a typo as big--$800 million big--as the boo-boo at the heart of this courtroom drama. That the case in the courtroom is not business litigation but a murder charge shows the intricate twists this story takes, which starts as a frantic closing of a real estate transaction. When the error is discovered to have been made on the computer of the law firm's senior partner, said partner is shortly found dead, pistol in hand. Murder or suicide? The victim's antagonist at the firm, foulmouthed John Shepard, lands in the dock, defended by Ed Mulcahy, trying his first criminal case after a career drafting estoppels and subordinated debentures. What he lacks in skill and polish he makes up in doggedness, though hindered by his client's cagey alibis for the night of the crime. Against the evidence, Mulcahy decides to argue frame-up, trying to ensnare another lawyer involved in the original deal. The cross-examination is tense, the witnesses get trapped, and the jury returns a verdict of . . . Willett, a debut novelist, impressively maintains the suspense and convincingly conveys courtroom atmosphere. Gilbert Taylor From Kirkus Reviews Ever have one of those days when a little bitty error snowballs into big trouble? Willett's first legal suspenser traces the fallout from an $839 million typo. In only eight days, the Boston law firm of Freer Motley has succeeded in rushing through New York financier Sidney Weiner's leveraged buyout of Idlewild Industries, the lion's share of the financing to be secured by an $840 million mortgage on Idlewild Tower. Shortly after the deal is done, though, somebody discovers that the principal amount on the mortgage has been changed to $840 thousand--an unobtrusive error all the lawyers on the buyout were too dazed by paperwork to catch, and one likely to leave the partners in Freer Motley a hefty $140 million out of pocket. Whodunit? The obvious suspects are John Shepard, the brilliant, irascible architect of the deal, who's just resigned from the firm over his failure to make partner, and senior partner Samuel Whitaker, bitter over being eased into retirement. New partner Ed Mulcahy, the in-house litigator pressed into service to investigate the slip, figures things couldn't get much blacker for Freer Motley--until Whitaker is shot to death and Shepard arrested for his murder. As if that weren't bad enough, Shepard calls in an old debt by insisting that Mulcahy defend him. (Some of these complications provide interesting new wrinkles before and after the case goes to trial; some of them just produce lumps.) It looks as if the case will turn on the missing George Creel, the legless computer whiz from Freer Motley. But why is it that when Creel is finally found, he refuses to talk until he's on the stand? Like his criminally inexperienced hero, Willett still has a bit to learn about this line of work. Most of his legal types are too realistic to be very engaging. The over-obvious culprit and an over-ingenious surprise ending don't help. -- Copyright ®1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. From the Inside Flap n a Boston boardroom, there's a disaster in the making. High in an office tower in the heart of the financial district, lawyers and bankers are fighting a deadline to close an $840,000,000 leveraged buyout.  Under the pressure of the crowded agenda, no one notices that a zero has been dropped from the mortgage document.  The papers are signed, cheers and applause roar from the boardroom--and the fuse of a time bomb is lit.  When it explodes, there will be hell to pay.  As the partners of Freer, Motley, the presiding law firm, will discover, they are collectively and personally liable to their client to make up the multimillion-dollar shortfall. And so begins an accelerating and dire chain of events.  Freer, Motley's senior partner is found dead, and its brightest young associate is charged with murder.  The firm needs a fall guy, and John Shepard, brilliant but arrogant--and recently passed over for partner--fills the role to per About the Author Sabin Willett is a partner with the Boston law firm Bingham, Dana & Gould, and The Deal is his first novel. He graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law School, and lives outside Boston.