Brain Storm: A Novel - Hardcover

Dooling, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679452397 ISBN 13: 9780679452393

Publisher: Random House, 1998

Synopsis

Attorney Joe Watson had never been to court except to be sworn in. He did legal research, investigating copyright infringement in video games (addressing such matters as: Did CarnageMaster plagiarize their beheading sequence from Greek SlaughterHouse?).

He was a Webhead, a cybernerd doing support work for the lawyers in his firm who did go to court. And he was good at it. He was on track to become one of the youngest partners in the firm, and he was able--by a hair--to support his wife and children in an affluent neighborhood. Then he got notice that the tyrannical Judge Whittaker J. Stang had appointed him to defend James Whitlow, a small-time lowlife with a long rap sheet accused of a double hate crime: killing his wife's deaf black lover. When Watson stubbornly decides not to plead out his client, he is soon evicted from his comfortable life: His boss fires him, his wife leaves him and takes the children, and the Whitlow case begins to consume all of his time.

He has only two allies--Rachel Palmquist, a beautiful, brainy neuroscientist with her own designs on his client and on Watson himself, and Myrna Schweich, a punk criminal-defense lawyer with orange hair who swears like a trooper and definitely inhales. Watson's  finished. Or is he?To answer that question requires, among many other things, a brain scan for Watson in a state of strapped-down arousal, a Voice Transcription Device to eavesdrop on a dead deaf man's conversation, two chimpanzees who have no choice but to love each other, and a blind news vendor who demonstrates a real touch when it comes to making money.  

For all the Dickensian energy and humor of this ingenious story, Brain Storm also stands at the center of many modern controversies, from the death penalty and the circus atmosphere of criminal trials to neuroscientific and moral quandaries about sex, crime, and religion. Rachel tells Watson that free will is a fiction: "There's not much you can do about it if you're biologically predisposed to violence or sexual misbehavior. You just have to make the best of it, and try not to get caught."

Once a deliberate yes-man at home and in the office, Joe Watson finds himself fighting not only to save his marriage and his career but also to hold intact his conviction that a person is more than a series of chemical reactions.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Dooling is a writer and a lawyer.   His second novel, White Man's Grave, was finalist for the National Book Award in fiction. He is also the author of Critical Care and Blue Streak, and he is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and the National Law Journal. He lives in Omaha, Nebraska, with his wife and children.

From the Back Cover

Praise for Brain Storm

"Brain Storm is a clever legal thriller, a side-splitting black comedy, and a book that raises serious questions about our legal system and the nature of man. In other words, Brain Storm has something for everyone. A definite 10."
--Phillip Margolin

"A gorgeously rampaging take on brain chemistry, hate--crime law, and the grounds for contempt of court."
--Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"His passion for the law pulls us breathlessly along. An obvious choice for Grisham and Turow fans."
--Booklist

Praise for White Man's Grave

"A bravura display. . . . Dooling evokes the humane checks and balances of a deep world: the logic, you might say, of its magic."
--Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Rollickingly funny. . . . Dooling's prose jangles and clangs with the inspired lunacy of a pinball machine."
--The Washington Post

Praise for Critical Care

"[Dooling is] a writer so thoroughly in control it's hard to believe this is a first novel. A stunning debut . . . a powerhouse."
--Kirkus Reviews

From the Inside Flap

Watson had never been to court except to be sworn in. He did legal research, investigating copyright infringement in video games (addressing such matters as: Did CarnageMaster plagiarize their beheading sequence from Greek SlaughterHouse?). <br><br>He was a Webhead, a cybernerd doing support work for the lawyers in his firm who did go to court. And he was good at it. He was on track to become one of the youngest partners in the firm, and he was able--by a hair--to support his wife and children in an affluent neighborhood. Then he got notice that the tyrannical Judge Whittaker J. Stang had appointed him to defend James Whitlow, a small-time lowlife with a long rap sheet accused of a double hate crime: killing his wife's deaf black lover. When Watson stubbornly decides not to plead out his client, he is soon evicted from his comfortable life: His boss fires him, his wife leaves him and takes the children, and the Whitlow case begins to consume all of his time. <br><br>He has only two allies

Reviews

When white supremacist James Whitlow shoots his wife's lover, a deaf African American sign language teacher, he finds himself a prime candidate for the application of new hate-crime statutes. But is he guilty of a hate crime? Enter his court-appointed lawyer, Joe Watson of Stern, Pale, the best law firm in St. Louis. A research wonk by avocation, an old schoolmate of Whitlow's by chance, young Watson resists pressure from colleagues and family to plea bargain: until all the facts come out, he means to stand by his client. Watson is such a nebbish, however, that it's hard to feel for him, especially since his triumphs occur offstage. He may write one hell of a brief, but as an action figure he often seems superfluous. Myrna Schweich, the tough-talking criminal lawyer he hooks up with, makes the good suggestions; curmudgeonly old Judge Stang explains the points of law; and even Rachel Palmquist, the sexy neuroscientist who wants to operate on Whitlow, gives Watson legal advice. Will he fall for Rachel's brainy charms? Since Watson can't imagine his wife (an unattractive walk-on character) as anything other than the ball and chain to whom he's pledged fidelity, it's difficult to care. Dooling, a lawyer whose White Man's Grave was a 1994 NBA finalist, has taken an intriguing law-school conundrum and grafted it onto a study of white-collar mores. The result is half bull session, half film noir. Yet the novel is saved by its extra-dry sense of satire (the Jamesian nameplay is only the start), faltering only when Dooling seems to ask that we take his characters with a straight face rather than as elements in a sharply drawn lampoon of a society drowning in legalisms. Film rights to Alan Pakula.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

A comic cautionary tale for young lawyers everywhere: Whatever it takes, don't agree to defend an alleged hate killer. James F. Whitlow (so the US Attorney claims) arrived at his army-base home to find Elvin Brawley, the African-American artist Whitlow's enlisted wife had hired to give sign-language lessons to the couple's deaf son, giving Mary Whitlow another kind of instruction. Inflamed not only by jealousy but by hatred of blacks and the deaf, Whitlow shot the interloper and now faces a murder charge, with only his court-appointed lawyer, neophyte Joe Watsona research and writing factotum at the swanky St. Louis firm of Stern, Pale & Covin who hasn't set foot in a courtroom since he was sworn instanding between him and lethal injection. But Watson's inexperience is the least of his problems. His mentor at Stern, Pale wants him to drop this unlovely, nonpaying case forthwith and is prepared to find a reason to boot him out of the firm if he doesn't. The presiding judge, Whittaker J. Stang, is a demented cackler; the federal prosecutors have reams of evidence linking Whitlow to the Eagle Warriors, a violent, crazy group of white supremacists; and Whitlow's best hopebewitching forensic neuropsychologist Rachel Palmquist, a.k.a. Aphrodite, MDis clearly ravenous to batten on him as a fascinating case study. Worse, she's also got designs on Watson (revealed in the most perverse seduction scene of the year) that could complete the hat trick by depriving him of wife and family along with job. It's all too much for this courtroom Candide, especially when it becomes clear that both his client and his client's wife, the all-important witness for the prosecution, are telling a bunch of whoppers. Dooling (White Man's Grave, 1994, etc.) has such a gorgeously rampaging take on brain chemistry, hate-crime law, and the grounds for contempt of court that you may find yourself, like Joe Watson, losing sight of the brilliantly overinflated conflict at the heart of this postmodern fable. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

There can be no doubt that Dooling is a born storyteller, as he demonstrated in White Man's Grave (LJ 4/15/94). He has the gift of making you read on, sometimes against your will, until you reach the end. But then on disengaging from his company, you feel you've been adventuring with comic-strip characters. Dooling is inclined to stress the gargoylish in his characters, and, apart from one or two exceptions, the people in this newest work are suggestive caricatures. The uncomplicated plot revolves around the attempt of a young lawyer named Joe Watson, whose specialty is computerized legal research and who has no trial experience, to defend under a new hate-crime guideline a white man accused of murdering a hearing-impaired black man whom he discovered in bed with his wife. Upon this fairly simple theme are embroidered many caustic wisecracks about human nature in general and the legal profession in particular. The overall verdict? Not bad. Recommended for larger public libraries.
-?A.J. Anderson, GSLIS, Simmons Coll., Boston
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Joe Watson envisions a comfortable future with a venerable law firm until a shrewd federal judge tags him for a pro bono murder case that will test the new Federal Sentencing Guidelines for hate crimes. Joe soon finds himself detached from his firm, separated from his family, and under the scrutiny of a pair of thugs who think he has something that belongs to them. A sexy forensic neurologist and a peppery criminal lawyer may or may not be in his corner. Joe doesn't fall into the lawyer-as-detective stereotype that usually signals lots of fast action, and the prose is demanding, with lots of legalese as well as some neurological theorizing. It's Dooling's skillful characterizations (especially cut-'em-off-at-the-knees Judge Stang) that drive the story, along with the complex racial and constitutional issues at the heart of the case. Dooling wants us to stop and think about our rights and freedoms, and his passion for the law pulls us breathlessly along. An obvious choice for Grisham and Turow fans. Stephanie Zvirin

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

"The beheadings are almost identical," said Joe Watson, placing his memo on the walnut expanse of Arthur Mahoney's worktable. Watson resisted the impulse to retrieve the memo on beheadings from the senior partner's elbow and check it again for typos. Arthur Mahoney--silver-haired mentor and the partner in charge of young Watson's career at Stern, Pale & Covin--had been less than enthusiastic about the last two memos Watson had done for him, and Watson feared that another unsatisfying piece of work might jeopardize the comfortable, protected niche he'd made for himself as research and writing factotum to the head of the litigation department.

"Almost identical?" asked Arthur. He set aside the stack of correspondence and enclosures he had been reviewing, swiveled in his recliner, and attended to his young associate and the press of the business at hand: decapitations.

"Yes," said Watson, panicking as he suddenly realized he had forgotten to use the spell checker himself (instead of just having his secretary do it), so he could activate the homophone feature of the firm's word processing software and double-check for words that were spelled correctly but were misused, like discrete instead of discreet, or principle instead of principal. He'd used stationery instead of stationary in the last memo, and Arthur had filled the margins with a handwritten screed on the importance of precision.

"Is this something more than look and feel?" asked Arthur. "We've seen so many of these damn beheadings. And you associates tend to make wild, very serious, highly theoretical allegations without thinking about the weeks of courtroom labor you'll need to prove them. How do you distinguish one beheading from another? I'll have to rely on young people to teach me about decapitations. We didn't have such grisly spectacles in my day."

"Both heads are severed at the third cervical vertebra--right here," said Watson, running a finger across the back of his own neck by way of illustration.
"So?" said Arthur. "Seems a likely enough site."
"Similar-sounding crunches occur when the blades strike the vertebra. The arteries and veins sprout like seaweed and spurt blood everywhere. I'm having the splatter patterns analyzed to be sure, but the splotches look identical. The heads topple forward and then roll down stairs--three stairs, to be exact, with three kerplunks. The animated victims turn
their headless stumps toward the gamer and squirt blood through the windpipes onto the screen. The heads themselves are mounted on pikes, and in both cases the heads say, "Ouch, that smarts!" in a kind of cartoon voice, at the instant of impalement."

Arthur made a small steeple of his index fingers and tapped it against his pursed lips. "Joseph," he said with a benevolent smile, "I can imagine myself arguing to a federal district judge that one beheading is identical to another. I can imagine myself arguing that one beheading is wholly distinguishable from some other beheading which has been served
up by way of comparison, but I'm straining somewhat to imagine myself arguing that two beheadings are almost identical. Instead of issuing general proclamations of their near identity, perhaps your analysis could commence with a succinct delineation of the difference or differences, however slight, between the two beheadings. I'll speak plainly: What is keeping our almost identical beheadings from becoming completely identical beheadings?"
"A halberd and a scimitar, sir," said Watson. "A halberd," said Arthur.

"It's kind of a combination poleax and pike mounted on a six-foot handle," Watson explained. "You've probably seen knights and beefeaters and whatnot holding them. Or maybe if you've been to a museum you've seen them leaning against suits of armor. The Met in New York has quite a collection."
"I know what a halberd is," said Arthur.
"I knew you would," said Watson, deciding not to mention that he had exhaustively researched the subject of halberds to the tune of six or seven billable hours, had viewed the Met's collection of halberds on-line , and had submitted his time under the heading "Research Look-and-Feel Issues Involving Ancillary Armaments, 6.75 Hours."

"In CarnageMaster, the Crusader's head is cut off by a Maltese knight with a halberd, but in Greek SlaughterHouse, Medusa is beheaded by Perseus, who uses a blazing scimitar."
"And a polished shield for a mirror?" Arthur asked eagerly.
"No," said Watson, "I don't think our clients are up on their Greek mythology. Perseus just kind of looks right at Medusa and whops off her head with a scimitar he must have stolen from a vanquished Turk after doing a little time traveling. Now, you're probably thinking, That's
different--Perseus and his scimitar are different from a Maltese knight with a halberd. But when the weapons are displayed later, the blood drips in precisely the same patterns from the blades to the same reticulated stone floor of an identical castle--the Castle of Skulls--which was designed by our client's multimedia programmers."

"Sounds like more than a coincidence," said Arthur, "but is this copyright infringement? Something more than look and feel? Has CarnageMaster stolen the story of Greek SlaughterHouse? The characters?" "CarnageMaster has stolen the soul of Greek SlaughterHouse," Watson said.

"Hmmm," said Arthur. "So we have these 'almost identical' beheadings, and we have the 'very similar' dungeon torture sessions, followed by the 'almost identical' disembowelments."
"That's right," said Watson. "Don't forget the nearly identical large-breasted blondes wearing see-through chain mail shackled to ringbolts and stones inside pink, secret chambers. In both games, male assailants brandish flesh-colored broadswords at them."
"We need more," said Arthur. "Subliminal Solutions and the SlaughterHouse team want to be absolutely certain of their position before amending their complaint and adding a request for punitive damages. We need to be sure this is all--what are the magic words?--'well
grounded in fact and warranted by existing law,' or we risk Rule Eleven sanctions. More research is indicated."

"Yes, sir," said Watson.

Arthur took a call. Watson gathered his papers and headed out, back to his office, a windowless cubicle one fourth the size of Arthur's spread. Arthur had the big office, the ancient measure of partner power, but he didn't have a 600 megahertz Pentium VI 3-D system with a subwoofer and a twenty-eight-inch flat-panel display, which the firm had installed in Watson's office to assist him in analyzing copyright litigation claims for the firm's software clientele. Arthur didn't 'do' computers, had no use for them. He was an example of that dying breed of lawyer who still pined for the days when former fraternity brothers and family friends paid dearly for sage advice and legal guidance. The old guy had barely
an inkling that modern corporate clients were no longer interested in sage advice (they could get that from the in-house lawyers they had on staff). They had all the family friends and wise men they needed; they came to Stern, Pale looking for armies of ruthless litigators and
information dominance, so they could massacre their opponents in court.

In the twilight of his august career, Arthur was still dispensing advice and memos to clients, but these days those memos and that advice consisted of information that had been winnowed, gathered, and compressed by associates using powerful computers and search
technologies. For young lawyers, like Joe, legal prowess increasingly depended on computer expertise, which meant that one had to curry favor and cultivate relationships not only with senior partners, who played real golf, but also with the management information systems (MIS) people, who played 3-D Microsoft Golf and who controlled access to the
machines and the software a young associate needed for optimum research capabilities.

For instance, Arthur barely knew the head of MIS--a shapeless, rumpled dweeb, affectionately known as Inspector Digit--who was Watson's buddy and primarily responsible for getting Watson into his high-end equipment. Digit was, in the language of the trade, a guy with lots of MIPS but no I/O. Plenty of brainpower, but subject to trap errors, freeze-ups, and system hangs when it came to interacting with humans. When Digit opened his mouth, argot and acronyms, techno-linguistics and programming instruction sets came out. Most lawyers said only "Uh-huh" and "Fix it" to Digit, which was why Digit valued Watson's friendship.
Watson, in turn, looked to Digit for the very latest in beta browsers and processing power.

Officially, the lawyers were allowed to use only firm-issued desktop PCs (referred to by the information elite as 'beige toasters') that were hooked to the network and ran five-year-old firm-approved software (hopelessly dated stuff, referred to as 'stone knives and bearskins');
third-party programs of any kind were strictly forbidden, for obvious security reasons. But unofficially, Inspector Digit and the MIS people gave Watson and a few other silicon turbonerds high-end machines and let them deploy and test the latest Web browsers, agents, robots, and legal systems software. It was the best way to test the stuff before
implementing it throughout the network. Watson and the other tech-headed lawyers were always clustergeeking around the new machines, running beta software, crashing supposedly crashproof software, or cycle crunching the networks on purpose, so that the MIS people would order them stand-alone workstations. Also known as propeller heads, spods, and terminal junkies, these associates knew the antiviral and security drills, so there was no point in limiting...

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0679452397
• ISBN 13: 9780679452393
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 401