The Big Cut

Golub may have earned a reputation as one of New York's best trial lawyers, but judging by his slow-moving debut effort to run with the Grishams and Turows of the world, he shouldn't quit his day job any time soon. Golub's legal alter-ego is Johnny Ocean, a slick but solitary trial lawyer who goes against his better judgment in taking a referral for a contentious high-stakes estate battle between a pair of high-society Manhattan sisters. Ocean's client is the gorgeous and glamorous Pandora Markham, who must prove that the $171 million given to her by her older sister, Babette, was a gift rather than a loan. Ocean's hormones go into high-speed overdrive at the prospect of winning the case and becoming Pandora's new beau, but the case itself is a mess, starting with his client's refusal to meet with him. Things get stickier when Markham turns out to have connections to a Chinese gangster overlord who murders the gorgeous Asian girl Ocean picks up during his investigation and tries to kill Ocean as well. The lawyer survives the attempt, but to top things off, the crooked judge is in cahoots with Babette's lawyer, so Ocean spends much of the novel spinning his wheels in an uphill effort to win the case. Golub's plotting is often as muddled as his protagonist's case, and the narrative veers from vague attempts to establish a noirish style, racy but ham-fisted phone conversations between Ocean and Pandora and courtroom legal scenes that fail to rev up the leaden plot. Not even a startling surprise ending can breathe life into lethargic story. (Mar.)