Defending the Truth

The fifth in this series finds Arizona attorney Joshua Rabb at the center of an eerily contemporary tale of political vengeance on the rampage. It's 1951 and Senator Joseph McCarthy's grandstanding has led to mass hysteria. Absurd accusations of communist sympathies have lead to prison, and Joshua's newest client's recent arrival from Moscow puts him automatically on the senator's list. Then, daughter Hanna and friends are jailed as demonstrators opposing the Korean War. This is not so much ""courtroom drama"" as a sweeping saga about believable characters, racial inequities (Rabb does work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs) and what politicians with malignant agendas are capable of if citizen apathy allows. The vivid flashbacks to WWII and the Holocaust, parallels between the Korean War and Vietnam, and clear legal explanations come together to form a lucid description of an important moment in American history. (Apr.)