Harriet Klausner's Review Archive
In Bari, Italy, convicted drug smuggler Fabio Paolicelli asks Guido Guerrieri to represent him on his appeal of a sixteen year sentencing. Guido looks at the trial in which Fabio's confession makes his guilt obvious. However, Fabio insists he was set up and that he admitted doing the crime to insure his wife Natsu Kawabata would not be on trial too. He also insists his lawyer Corrado Macrì worked for the opposition and not providing him with a good defense.
Guerrieri hesitates as he feels the appeal will fail because Fabio confessed, the man's past as a Fascist punk offers no redeeming quality to build from, and there is no lucid motive to forge a conspiracy to lock him away. However, upon meeting the exotic half-Japanese Natsu, Guido agrees to represent Fabio. As he constructs the defense, Guido cannot resist Natsu's lure even though he knows this is a morally wrong conflict of interest; they make love. If Fabio ever finds out and is freed from prison it could prove dangerous to his lawyer, who begins to wonder if he should throw the case too.
The legal thriller aspects are fascinating and cleverly devised, but that takes a back seat to the deep look at the ethics of the middle age attorney Guido. Readers will appreciate his realizations and rationalizations as he ponders between the best and worst defenses. Few sub-genre tales contain a better protagonist as he makes the tale worth reading with his fresh somewhat cynical spin (see INVOLUNTARY WITNESS).