Defending the Truth

Joshua Rabb Mystery #5

by Richard Parrish

With America caught in a national crisis, attorney Joshua Rabb goes against public opinion to take the case of a Tucson professor accused of traitorous activities. As the truth and law collide, Rabb is swept into a maelstrom of vicious lies and violent intrigue...and with everyone he loves at risk, he faces his most formidable courtroom challenge yet. But in his desperate search for answers, he is also about to discover that patriotism makes the perfect cover for greed, treachery, and betrayal...and that justice can be the most dangerous ideal of all.

410 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[Beth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my usual genre so I can't judge if it was good for the genre. It was a fast paced book that kept my attention. Set back during the McCarthy era, so a bit of historical fiction mixed with a legal thriller.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 1998 legal thriller is set in Tucson Arizona in the 1950s during Senator McCarthy’s reign of terror. Joshua Rabb is a lawyer who takes on a case no one else would touch, that of two local university professors who have been charged under McCarthy’s Un American activities laws for an article they published in a scholarly magazine. Joshua work is complicated when his college aged daughter is arrested for picketing the court house in support of the professor and a Federal Marshall is killed when his car is bombed. To add to the problems a local Senator and staunch supporter of McCarthy is actively pushing for the conviction of the professor and the students and also manages to pressure the DA to trump up charges against Joshua himself. The portrayal of the lengths that McCarthy and his followers went to smear those who did not fit their model of loyal Americans is enough to set ones teeth on edge and hope that we never see their likes again. Defiantly a good read if you can find it. (Mine was a paperback 0-451-40833-0)

[Rosemary Palmer · Rating 5 out of 5]

This Tuscon, AR attorney is a wonderful author! I've read all his books and was never disappointed, not once!!

[Momina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Poor man's Turow.

[Judy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really liked this one . Written by a Jewish lawyer, and there was a lot on controversy. He's a lawyer and it's opening with his daughter is a student from the U. of AZ. who boycotts the Federal Building in Tucson along with about 45 other students, when the county marshall enters the parking lot in his car and someone throws a fire bomb at the marshall killing him. All but 5 of the students run away, and those 5 are indicted for murder, when it is later proved the Maitland had him killed along with McCarthy, who was involved with the debockle. Very good, Those two senators were rats, too bad they ever got elected.