Protect and Defend: A Novel - Hardcover

Patterson, Richard North

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679450440 ISBN 13: 9780679450443

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2000

Synopsis

A compelling new novel from Richard North Patterson- a major departure, and that confirms his place among the most important popular novelists at work today.

A newly elected president faces the unexpected chance to nominate a new chief justice of the Supreme Court. His first choice is a nationally respected Court of Appeals judge, a woman whose nomination faces two serious obstacles: a long-held personal secret; and the prospect that a volatile abortion case- a trial pitting a 15-year-old girl against her pro-life parents- will come before the court. And the Senate majority leader is determined to thwart the president's nomination for reasons that cross the boundary between the political and the personal.

As these stories intertwine, building in complexity and suspense, Patterson gives us the resounding clash of competing ambitions between the president and the majority leader; the equally momentous collision of science and culture in the courtroom; and, in an unprecedented novelistic depiction of the legal process from the perspective of the judge rather than the lawyers, a revelation of both how the judicial system works and how it intersects with politics, for better or for worse.

PROTECT AND DEFEND is a triumph- the definitive novel of politics and law at the dawn of the 21st century.

About this title

Review:

Richard North Patterson's excellent Protect and Defend is both courtroom drama and political nail-biter; if politics is the art of the possible, just how far is it legitimate to go in a cause which you think of as good? A 15-year-old, pregnant with a seriously disabled child delivering which alive will prevent her having further children; parents so adamantly opposed to abortion that they will refuse consent to what she wants--this is the minefield into which idealistic lawyer Sarah walks knowing that she has found the hard case to discredit a bad law. Her former mentor Caroline is up for promotion to Chief Justice--and Sarah's test case becomes the litmus paper by which an entire political culture brings itself to judgement... Patterson forces us to consider the entire question of the private, the personal and the political--no one from Democrat President to Republican candidate has entirely clean hands, but just how intrusive is the process of scrutiny allowed to be? Patterson writes as an insider--his acknowledgements list includes two US Presidents--but his sense of the law and of the political process is balanced by compassion for those conscripted into the public eye by circumstances not ambition. --Roz Kaveney

Review:

""PROTECT AND DEFEND IS A WINNER. . . . ENGROSSING FROM THE FIRST PAGE . . . Patterson crank[s] up a wild ride on a roller coaster of morality, politics, and emotions."
--"USA Today
"POWERFUL . . . RIVETING FROM BEGINNING TO END . . . With "Protect and Defend, Richard North Patterson lays further claim to being one of America's best contemporary popular novelists."
--"The Detroit News
"BRILLIANT . . . PATTERSON HAS CAUGHT LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE. . . . PUT THIS ONE AT THE TOP OF YOUR HOT LIST."
--STEPHEN KING
""PROTECT AND DEFEND" IS A WINNER. . . . ENGROSSING FROM THE FIRST PAGE . . . Patterson crank[s] up a wild ride on a roller coaster of morality, politics, and emotions."
--"USA Today"
"POWERFUL . . . RIVETING FROM BEGINNING TO END . . . With "Protect and Defend," Richard North Patterson lays further claim to being one of America s best contemporary popular novelists."
--"The Detroit News
"
"BRILLIANT . . . PATTERSON HAS CAUGHT LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE. . . . PUT THIS ONE AT THE TOP OF YOUR HOT LIST."
--STEPHEN KING
"

"PROTECT AND DEFEND IS A WINNER. . . . ENGROSSING FROM THE FIRST PAGE . . . Patterson crank[s] up a wild ride on a roller coaster of morality, politics, and emotions."
--USA Today
"POWERFUL . . . RIVETING FROM BEGINNING TO END . . . With Protect and Defend, Richard North Patterson lays further claim to being one of America's best contemporary popular novelists."
--The Detroit News

"BRILLIANT . . . PATTERSON HAS CAUGHT LIGHTNING IN A BOTTLE. . . . PUT THIS ONE AT THE TOP OF YOUR HOT LIST."
--STEPHEN KING

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0679450440
• ISBN 13: 9780679450443
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 549