EARLY GRAVE

In this 15th installment of a thriller series, a Miami lawyer takes a stance against football after a high school player’s alarming injury.

As a former Miami Dolphins linebacker, attorney Jake Lassiter knows how dangerous football can be. All that contact on the field left him with chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and he suffers the constant pounding of migraines and tinnitus. He also has problems with his memory and can’t recall coaxing his friend and old Dolphins teammate Langston “Tank” Pittman to forge his own wife’s name on a consent form—allowing the couple’s teen son, Rodrigo, to play football. So when Rod is seriously hurt during a game’s kickoff and may never walk again, guilt practically crushes Lassiter, the boy’s de facto uncle. The lawyer vows to “abolish” football, though he’s really after a temporary ban until the Florida High School Athletic Association declares the sport safe. He has barely filed suit (against the school’s coach and the FHSAA) when he gets a taste of the hostile defiance he was anticipating. The Consortium, a supposed organization of high-profile companies, aims to protect high school football, as a legal action against it also threatens the billion-dollar NCAA and NFL. But Lassiter has a solid case for “coaching malpractice,” from the coach keeping an unmistakably disoriented Rod in the game to the man running illegal pit drills during team practice. Unfortunately, the defense attorneys play dirty, as Lassiter suspects they’ve got people following, tracking, and wiretapping him. It’s sure to be a white-knuckled fight if Lassiter wants a win in the courtroom.

In this series outing, Levine’s recurring protagonist proves sublimely complex. He’s a whip-smart lawyer whose painful bouts with merciless CTE earn him sympathy. But he’s not always a purely ethical professional; as Rod’s mom rightly points out, Lassiter pursues this case more for himself than for the injured teen and his family. The rest of the cast is also strong—loyal pal Tank is the opposite of his wife, who blames Lassiter for their son’s tragedy, while the FHSAA’s attorney Sandra Day is a formidable and possibly unscrupulous opponent. The author fuels this legal thriller with an impressive pace, showing that a deceptively simple “wack-a-doodle lawsuit” can churn out endless surprises and bumps in the road. Lassiter, for example, digs up evidence from a TV news program—with the help of a skilled hacker—and from a crucial item that someone’s been keeping. The attorney is moreover up against the defense’s questionable evidence; an offer that looks an awful lot like a bribe; and strangers creeping around his property. Meanwhile, understated humor brightens the novel courtesy of Lassiter’s charming quips (even in court). But random citizens’ periodic tweets provide the biggest laughs; they’re rife with assumptions, sarcasm, and amusing spellings (“I heard Lassiter is dying. Well, I say good writtens”). The ending courtroom battle sears with intense and realistic turns, as at least one of Lassiter’s smoking guns unexpectedly fizzles. It all builds to an unforgettable closing scene.

An extraordinary hero stars in a legal tale as believable as it is riveting.