Jurisprudence noir

Personal confession time: I dodged law school at least in part because of a lack of enthusiasm for case law. But I might have changed my mind if more judges emulated Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts’ brief foray into Hammett-esque noir:

Officer Sean Devlin, Narcotics Strike Force, was working the morning shift. Undercover surveillance. The neighborhood? Tough as a three  dollar steak. Devlin knew. Five years on the beat, nine months with the Strike Force. He’d made fifteen, twenty drug busts in the neighborhood.

Devlin spotted him: a lone man on the corner. Another approached. Quick exchange of words. Cash handed over; small objects handed back. Each man then quickly on his own way. Devlin knew the guy wasn’t buying bus tokens. He radioed a description and Officer Stein picked up the buyer. Sure enough: three bags of crack in the guy’s pocket. Head downtown and book him. Just another day at the office.

Yes, that’s an honest-to-Chandler quote from an otherwise normal dissent from denial to review issued by the court with regards to Pennsylvania v. Dunlap, a rather run of the mill drug case. Check out the full story at the LegalTimes blog.

Apparently some members of the court aren’t satisfied with merely coming to nonsensical decisions that abridge basic human rights; they’re gonna subject us to their derivative writing efforts along the way. Which, I’ll grant, is sort of a hoot.

Book Review: The Steel Remains

Richard K. Morgan’s The Steel Remains is, as I mentioned in my last post, staggeringly awesome. It tells the tale of three unlikely heroes and unlikelier friends, drawn together by a war that threatens to destroy all of humanity, that they manage to win through steel, skill, heart, and the assistance of a more friendly group of non-humans who lay their lives (and their Sufficiently Advanced Technology) on the line to help humanity win the day.

Wait, no. It doesn’t tell that tale at all, really.

The Steel Remains instead picks up nearly a decade later. The enemy is defeated, but victory didn’t prevent humanity from quickly finding ways to begin destroying itself again. Our heroes find themselves exiled and marginalized thanks to their culture, heritage, or sexuality… but still called upon when the world needs saving.

With this novel, Morgan brings the same level of craft and bravado to fantasy that he brought to sci-fi in the Takeshi Kovacs series. While this means that readers should be prepared for lots of graphic sex and violence, they’ll also discover excellent characterization, beautiful imagery, genuine horror, insightful social commentary, and deconstruction of genre thoroughly grounded in love for that genre. (Morgan specifically cites Michael Moorcock, Karl Edward Wagner, and Poul Anderson as influences, but it’s tough not to see shades of Conan in the characters of both the swordsman Ringil and the barbarian Egar.) This novel also demonstrates again Morgan’s ability to balance high concept with strong storytelling, a rare commodity in fantasy and sci-fi.

In short, The Steel Remains is one helluva ride. I can’t wait for the sequel.

A midnight report

I spent a huge chunk of today working on my internship, with results that I’m pleased with and wish I could share. But, while the research guide I’m working on likely won’t go live until the Spring, it’s really starting to look like a guide. Lots of resources (including embedded video and RSS feeds to show off how cool LibGuides is), and even some images to pretty it up. I need to get some print resources worked in, though: I tend towards a kind of electronic chauvanism when I create these sorts of things, and that’s a habit I badly need to break.

I’ll be dipping back into book reviews sooner than I’d anticipated, to tackle Richard K. Morgan’s staggeringly awesome The Steel Remains.