Protect and Defend by Richard North Patterson

However, there was nothing even-handed in this book. I would have enjoyed a work of fiction that explored these issues in an even-handed way, even if from a liberal perspective. Although conservative and Christian, I am not a pro-life advocate. This book is about abortion, in the main, and to a lesser extent about other politically-charged issues. If you are going to right a book with such strong biases, at least have the decency to warn the reader on the dust jacket or something. She has portrayed the parents of a girl who is pregnant as the enemy, and completely justified the lawyer aiding the girl in the deception as though it has always been that way. Even if my views were different than they are, I can not imagine slamming those whos opinions vary from my own like this.

So, if your idea of a great protagonist hero is a hauty minded lawyer racing the clock to get the abortion legalized before the unborn baby is too old to abort (yeh really)then you'll love this trash. Nowhere in the intros for it did it give any hint as to the degree of bias the author bears. But I had a responsibility here because I was blindsided by this book. My bias is obvious, but believe it or not I don't get active in these issues. Boy, if it was the authors intention to strike the battle line and then attack pro-life, then job well done. Tried to give this book 0 stars, but the fields won't allow that. Protect and Defend is a triumph - the definitive novel of politics and law at the dawn of the 21st century. A compelling new novel from Richard North Patterson - a major departure, and that confirms his place among the most important popular novelists at work today.Ī newly elected president faces the unexpected chance to nominate a new chief justice of the Supreme Court. His first choice is a nationally respected Court of Appeals judge, a woman whose nomination faces two serious obstacles: a long-held personal secret and the prospect that a volatile abortion case - a trial pitting a 15-year-old girl against her pro-life parents - will come before the court. And the Senate majority leader is determined to thwart the president's nomination for reasons that cross the boundary between the political and the personal.Īs these stories intertwine, building in complexity and suspense, Patterson gives us the resounding clash of competing ambitions between the president and the majority leader the equally momentous collision of science and culture in the courtroom and, in an unprecedented novelistic depiction of the legal process from the perspective of the judge rather than the lawyers, a revelation of both how the judicial system works and how it intersects with politics, for better or for worse.

Protect and Defend by Richard North Patterson