Robert Bailey is a productive, energetic writer who likes to try new things. He has two novels in the Bocephus Haynes series, four in the McMurtrie and Drake series and three in the Jason Rich series, my favorite. “Boomerang” is a recent stand-alone.
Usually, Bailey’s protagonist is a male attorney but this time is different. Max Ringo is a woman and technically not an attorney since her license is still under suspension. Max had been a courtroom star, a ferocious trial lawyer whose specialty was the defense of physicians being sued for malpractice, a delicate business with many bogus or overenthusiastic plaintiffs and in which the physician can lose his career in a heartbeat.
Before the opening of this novel, Max was in a terrible automobile accident, suffered serious injuries including a smashed pelvis, and in the course of treatment became addicted to oxycodone and other painkillers to the point where she would do anything to get them. Bailey likes to put his protagonists through hell and rehab.
Now Max Ringo is beginning her a comeback, this time as a mediator. No law license required. Mediation, when successful, is a win/win situation. The two sides make offers. The mediator carries them back and forth between the separate rooms and offers counsel when asked. In theory, at least, the process ends when each side is satisfied. The big incentive is they all avoid a court trial, with expensive lawyers and where anything can happen.
The case she is mediating is a nasty divorce: the rich and powerful Strassburgs. The family company has enormous land holdings and, as this is Huntsville, many government contracts. Perry Strassburg is a bad guy, unfaithful and violent. Stephanie Richardson Strassburg is a reasonable woman, wants a divorce and is willing to meet Perry’s demands, but her father, Dagger Richardson, hates Perry and is stubborn.
At their first meeting, Perry makes his demands and, in a shocking moment, reveals that his thugs have kidnapped Max’s son Nathan, who is himself a teenage meth addict, and will kill him if Max does not manipulate the proceedings so he gets all he wants.
All this happens in the first few pages. For the rest of this thriller we follow Max as she struggles to keep her professional poise and her sworn duty as mediator, placate Perry, and keep her son from being killed.
It’s too big a job for one person but, happily for Max and for the reader, Max calls on her old friend Jason Rich the billboard lawyer and Rich calls in his old pal, the combat veteran Colonel Satch Tonidandel. Violent action ensues.
As a footnote let me add that this is Bailey’s first novel set in his hometown, Huntsville, and he has a big time with it, taking us on an extended tour of eateries and bars.
