Title: Trials of a Dead Lawyer’s Wife: A True Story
Author: Maggie Redmon
Publisher: XlibrisUS
ISBN: 166418855X
Pages: 286
Genre: True Story
Reviewed by: David Allen
Pacific Book Review
Whoever said “truth is stranger than fiction” knew what they were talking about. Trails of a Dead Lawyer’s Wife: A True Story, is a living testament to this wisdom.
The book begins with a psychic’s strange prophecy. The narrator of this harrowing memoir learns that her husband Scott will be losing his law practice, will be facing stern judgment for ‘moral turpitude,’ and will end up face down on a table with a ‘hole in his spine.’ Unfortunately, all of this comes to pass.
In a series of brilliantly and cagily written episodes, we follow the breathtaking downward spiral of Maggie’s and Scott’s lives. Maggie’s mother is diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer. Maggie’s apartment goes down in flames. Scott takes up with a vampiric slut named Brandi Scruggs, who somehow manages to get Scott to will her half his money–the day before he dies. Prior to his death, Scott squanders much of his money on Brandi and on alcohol and hard drugs. At least two other people in Brandi’s orbit die under mysterious circumstances. Truth is stranger than fiction–right! Everything is wrong in this nightmarish confluence of disaster. But everything is right with this book.
This weaving and bobbing story is absolutely compelling, a true spellbinder which will keep readers on the edge of their seats. The writing is quick, intelligent, breezy and always goes down easy. The setting of the book – Augusta, Georgia and environs– makes for an interesting backdrop in this true story of Southern yuppies gone bad. Brandi Scruggs and Scott’s mother Hazel come off as the most clearly egregious characters, riddled with metastatic greed and psychopathy. But they are not alone.
Local law enforcement has likewise been compromised by back-room sub rosa deals. Over the course of literal decades, try as she might, Maggie cannot bring her husband’s murderer to justice. Maggie, a disability advisor, has the wherewithal and smarts to figure out the Machiavellian conniving that led to her husband’s poisoning and death. But the knowledge comes late in the game, and, as the author cannily reminds us, many if not most unexplained deaths in this country go unexplained.
The book is a true to life thriller that also poses a number of fascinating questions. What lies do we tell ourselves and others in the pursuit of pleasure and gain? To what extent is a person aware of their self-destructiveness? What is insight? To what extent do addicts and alcoholics dissociate themselves from awareness of their reality? And, of course, what can be done?
Maggie Redmond was able to eventually wrest and salvage her life from this ongoing ordeal. She was not able to bring her husband’s murderer to justice. She did, however, bring her considerable writing talent (she and Scott shared a vociferous appetite for books, amassing a library of several thousand volumes) to bear in creating this awesome tale that hands down equals anything Turow, Ludlam, Grisham et al. have to offer. Seriously, folks, this is not a book to be missed!
