Justice For None: A Novel

Product Description

In their second novel, Gene Hackman and Daniel Lenihan bring to life the harsh plains and smouldering courtrooms of the Midwest: the small town of Vermilion, Illinois, on the brink of the Great Depression. Boyd Calvin is a troubled World War I veteran on the run from the law, suspected of murdering his estranged wife and her lover. Only a female reporter for the
Chicago Tribune and the head of a sanitarium for veterans are not convinced of Boyd’s guilt. Boyd joins forces with another wrongly accused man, an African-American, and the two begin to face their shadowed pasts while fighting against the odds of justice.

From Publishers Weekly

This second outing by coauthors Hackman and Lenihan (
Wake of the Perdido Star) centers on Boyd Calvin, a 28-year-old shell-shocked World War I veteran. In 1929, Calvin stops by his ex-wife’s home and finds her dead in a pool of blood, while her current boyfriend peruses a Bible in the kitchen. More shots ring out, and the lover is dead. Calvin is seen fleeing the scene, the only suspect. But the question of Calvin’s guilt or innocence isn’t really the point of the novel, which serves primarily to air the authors’ opinions on race, class and the treatment of military veterans in America. When Calvin is initially apprehended, he lands in a jail cell next to George, a black man who’s been unjustly charged with—yep, you guessed it—raping a white woman. The two become friends and fugitives together. Calvin shovels guts in a Chicago slaughterhouse and, with the help of George, briefly enters the world of early-20th-century black America and then dabbles in bootlegging. Once Calvin’s travels exhaust the authors’ apparent interest in exploring the social history of greater Chicago, Calvin turns himself in to the authorities to stand trial. Despite a few compelling scenes, the novel lacks focus and a unified vision, making for a tedious and poorly organized read.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

In their first novel,
Wake of the Perdido Star (1999), actor Hackman and coauthor Lenihan combined historical and adventure fiction. In their second collaboration, they mix historical fiction with elements of the murder mystery. As in the previous book, readers must overlook the clumsy prose style (“The sun had climbed to its 9:00 A.M. reserved spot in the sky”) in order to appreciate the suspenseful story. Young Boyd Calvin, living in a small town in Illinois in the late 1920s, attempts to put his life and marriage back together after his convalescence in a hospital, where he spent time for mental strain incurred as a doughboy in the Great War. But one night, Boyd’s estranged wife is shot dead, and circumstances point to him as the doer of the deed. In jail he gets acquainted with a black man accused of raping a white woman. Add into the equation a woman reporter for a Chicago newspaper who is in town to investigate the murder, and the formula for an exciting yarn springs into place. The authors show a good understanding of locale and time period, and Boyd is portrayed with enough depth to make readers care about him.
Brad Hooper

Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Inside Flap

1929, Vermilion, Illinois. A prosperous small town just before the Depression.

On the fringe of polite society is Boyd Calvin, a World War I veteran still haunted by his experiences and unable to find a place for himself. Estranged from his once-loving wife, he drives a trolley and lives hand-to-mouth in a flophouse. When Boyd stumbles upon the scene of his wife’s brutal killing, he loses his nerve and runs, only to be captured and jailed for double murder.

In prison, he meets and befriends George, a black convict accused of raping a white woman. Narrowly escaping a crowd’s attempt to lynch them, the men flee for their lives, hiding together before making their way to the anonymity of Chica