The Defense Lawyer: The Barry Slotnick Story

by James Patterson, Benjamin Wallace

Overview

From a master of true crime comes the story of the criminal lawyer who represented everybody from Manuel Noriega to John Gotti to Bernie Goetz—and won every single case.

Known for his sharp mind, sharp suits, and bold courtroom strategies, Bronx-native Barry Slotnick is known as the best criminal lawyer in the US.
 
He calls himself “Liberty’s Last Champion.”
 
Slotnick mediates Bette Midler’s bathhouse contract and represents John Gotti, “The Dapper Don.” He defends “Subway Shooter” Bernie Goetz and negotiates future First Lady Melania Trump’s pre-nup.
 
His unparalleled legal brilliance defines a profession, a city—and an era.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780759555150
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	12/20/2021
Edition description:	Large Print
Pages:	544
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

James Patterson is the world's bestselling author. The creator of Alex Cross, he has produced more enduring fictional heroes than any other novelist alive. He lives in Florida with his family.

Benjamin Wallace is a features writer at New York magazine, a contributing editor at Vanity Fair, and the author of The Billionaire’s Vinegar, a New York Times nonfiction bestseller.

Hometown:

Palm Beach, Florida

Date of Birth:

March 22, 1947

Place of Birth:

Newburgh, New York

Education:

B.A., Manhattan College, 1969; M.A., Vanderbilt University, 1971

Website:

http://www.jamespatterson.com

Editorial Reviews

2021-10-13
The Patterson publishing machine clanks its way into the nonfiction aisles in this lumbering courtroom drama.

Barry Slotnick made a considerable fortune and reputation as a defense attorney who had a long list of controversial clients, including mob boss John Gotti and Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega. An “urbane lawyer known for his twenty-five-hundred-dollar Fioravanti suits, he was not unacquainted with violence,” write Patterson and Wallace. One of his early cases, indeed, involved a group of Jewish Defense League members who allegedly blew up a Broadway producer’s office, killing a woman who worked there. Slotnick’s defense was a standard confuse-the-jury ploy, but it worked. He put similar tactics to work in his defense of Bernhard Goetz, the “subway shooter” whose trial made international news. The authors open after that trial had concluded in yet another Slotnick win, and with a sensational incident: He was attacked by a masked man who beat him with a baseball bat. The evidence is sketchy, but it seems to place the attack in the hands of organized crime—perhaps even Gotti himself. No matter: Slotnick, “who saw himself as the foe of the all-powerful government” and “liberty’s last champion,” was soon back to representing clients including Radovan Karadžić, the murderous Bosnian Serb who was eventually imprisoned for having committed genocide; Dewi Sukarno, the widow of Indonesia’s similarly bloodstained president, “arrested for slashing the face of a fellow socialite with a broken champagne glass at a party in Aspen”; and Melania Trump, who had chosen Slotnick “to handle her prenup.” In the hands of a John Grisham, the story might have come to life, but while Patterson does a serviceable if cliché-ridden job of recounting Slotnick’s career, he fails to give readers much reason to admire the man.

For Patterson fans who can’t get enough.

Kirkus Reviews