 |
The Crime of Sheila McGough (Knopf; $22) is, to put it plainly, charmlessness. And it is Janet Malcolm's task to show how lack of charm can lead a good woman to disbarment and a prison term for crimes (probably) not committed. McGough's overzealous defense of a con man was perceived as fraud, and so the book reads more as a comment on the importance of personality than as a revelation of a miscarriage of justice. She surely didn't deserve prison, but the courts hardly deserved a lawyer who, as her own attorney put it, "would take on a cause and flog it to death." Malcolm examines her dislike for Sheila even as she tracks down the witnesses against her. She doesn't quite succeed in transforming the unpleasant into the worthwhile. The creaky machinery of the legal thriller makes you yearn for a big payoff -- but no one, except poor Sheila, goes to jail.
Email
Print
Eight Year-End Films Vie for Oscar Contention
Sondheim and Lansbury on a Lifetime in Theater
The Black Keys Release Their Hip-hop Debut 
How the BQE Became an Artistic Muse
On Great Jones Street, Shopping Is Art 
Classic Fare, Old-world Charm at Le Caprice
Buy a Brownstone for Less Than $1 Million
Fifty of the City's Tastiest Soups
Reasons to Love New York 2009
New York Politicians Refuse to Quit
A-Rod Has Babe Ruth in His Sights
McCain Yields to the Party's Pressure
