LEGAL BRIEFS

Who says lawyers can’t write anything short? After you’ve savored Richard North Patterson’s graceful 1979 reminiscence by an old-school attorney’s reverent protÇgÇ and gotten over the shock of John Grisham’s four-page vignette from 1994, there are still nine brand-new, scarcely-longer tales left, from war stories by Jay Brandon and Phillip Margolin to Michael A. Kahn’s refreshing take on Cook County justice to Lisa Scottoline’s amusing tall tale about a prosecutor who brings his infant daughter to court. Editor Bernhardt (Naked Justice, 1997, etc.) unfolds a case as twisty as any in his novels, and Jeremiah Healy, in the cleverest of all the stories here, asks why a mobbed-up defendant would be so interested in a single juror. More routine entries by Philip Friedman, Steve Martini, and Grif Stockley round out the all-star cast, doing mostly all-star work.