Clifford Irving's Legal Novels - 04 - BOY ON TRIAL - A Legal Thriller (50 page)

Ginger Casey took me to lunch one day in the city, at Katz’s Delicatessen on East Houston Street, the only place in town that still carves all its pastrami and corned beef by hand, and asked me, “Did you love her, Billy?”

Did I?

Maybe you noticed that I never used the word to her, or even in talking about her, although there’s the possibility that my heart spoke words that other parts of me couldn’t hear. Was it no more than simple chemistry? Infatuation? A lonely boy’s dream turned into flesh and blood? A friendship that after its destined space of days no longer made sense?

Hard to say.

I do know one other thing. Despite all the bizarre things that happened, and all the foolish assumptions that kept tripping me up, I had an experience whose memory I don’t ever want to lose. When I was with Amy, I reached out across that huge gap between human beings and learned to value another person as much as I valued myself. That’s an amazing experience.

“I don’t know if I really loved her, Ginger,” I said. “I really don’t know. But I do know that I want it to happen again.”

Ginger reached across the table, over the bowl of pickles, took my hand, and looked deep into my eyes.

“It will, Billy,” she said..

And it did. But that’s another story, and I’ll save it for another time. You might not believe it. You might not even have believed the story I’ve just told you, but I give you my word of honor that it’s true.

***

(Please continue ...)

Dear Reader,

If you enjoyed this book, please tell your friends about it. And if you have a few moments, you can post a review. Thoughtful and positive opinions encourage a writer.
 

And of course they help sales. Writers have to live and eat (just like real human beings).
 

Other good books by Clifford Irving are available. The titles follow, and they link to Kindle. Or you might want to visit the author's website at:

TRIAL
 – A Legal Thriller

“The courtroom scenes are breathtaking . . . gripping suspense . . . riveting!”   — 
Publishers Weekly

FINAL ARGUMENT
 – A Legal Thriller

“A courtroom thriller, a mean streets thriller, a Florida cracker thriller, a gritty prison thriller, and an Everyman study of good and evil all rolled into one. And every part of it is terrific. What a wonderful piece of storytelling!”— Donald Westlake, 
The New York Times

DADDY’S GIRL
: A True Thriller of Texas Justice

“Irving builds suspense with skill and makes the people come to life . . . a fine book.” — 
Houston Chronicle

Clifford Irving’s PRISON JOURNAL (a/k/a JAILING)

“A tale of intelligent triumph under remarkable stress. It has the ring of truth and is highly recommended.” — 
Times of London

TOM MIX AND PANCHO VILLA
 – a Romance of Revolutionary Mexico and the 20th Century American West 

“Fabulous, big, rawboned wild-blooded adventure tale that gives the sights and sounds and smells of a turn-of-the-century world real enough to touch. Clifford Irving has written a novel to make any writer proud and many readers grateful.” — 
Los Angeles Herald Examiner

Clifford Irving’s AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF HOWARD HUGHES

“It’s almost impossible to know where fact leaves off and fiction begins, if indeed that distinction should be made. This is a hypnotizing narrative, a brilliant study of money’s power to corrupt absolutely.” — Robert Kirsch, 
Los Angeles Times

THE ANGEL OF ZIN
 – A Holocaust Mystery

“Exciting, dynamic, and marvelously written.”— 
Publishers Weekly

FAKE!
 – the Life of the Master Art Faker of the 20
^th
 Century

“The wild, true story of three men who raped the art world . . . one of the most sophisticated suspense sagas of our time . . . fantastic.” — 
Chicago Tribune
 

THE SPRING
 – A Legal Thriller

“An extraordinarily entertaining and thoughtful combination of 
Lost Horizons
 and 
Presumed Innocent
. Not only is it a mystery--on at least two levels--but it poses troubling questions concerning prolonged life and its ultimate value.”— 
Booklist

STRANGER TO THE KINGDOM
 (formerly THE VALLEY) – a mythic novel of the Old West

"A superb novel that grips the reader from start to thrilling finish. Its solidity is that of a Greek myth." — 
Times Literary Supplement

PROJECT OCTAVIO
 – the Rise and Fall of the Howard Hughes Autobiography Hoax

“Brilliant.” – 
Newsday       
 “A masterpiece.” – 
CBS Radio

THE DEATH FREAK
 – A CIA Thriller (an Eddie Mancuso and Vasily Borgneff novel)

“A suavely persuasive, anti-Establishment thriller with the bitter aftertaste of Campari and vodka. A clever, cynical, and compelling novel.” — Time Magazine
  

THE SLEEPING SPY
 – A CIA Thriller (an Eddie Mancuso and Vasily Borgneff novel)

"A dazzling combination of high suspense and hijinks, and some most unusual killings." — 
Los Angeles Times

THE 38TH FLOOR
 – A Thriller of International Politics 

“Some smashing skullduggery, with shadowings, chases, and a marvelous climax.” — 
Sunday Telegraph

THE LOSERS
  – A New York Thriller

"A serious book built out of thriller elements." — 
London Sunday Times

CLASH BY NIGHT
 (formerly ON A DARKLING PLAIN) – A first novel

“A fine debut.”  — New York Times

THE BATTLE OF JERUSALEM
 – A Personal History of the Six-Day War, 1967

“Clifford [Irving] was there, he saw what happened, and he tells it the way it happened.”  – Irwin Shaw

BOY ON TRIAL
 – A Legal Thriller

not yet reviewed

(continued ...)

Author’s Bio:

(at the request of some readers)

Hello. I’m Clifford Irving, a man who’s had an eventful time on the planet. I was once on the cover of Time Magazine, and Hollywood made a movie about part of my life. Richard Gere played me.

I traveled twice around the world before most people living in it today were born; I stood guard in an Israeli kibbutz, crewed on a 56' three-masted schooner that sailed the Atlantic from Mexico to France, smuggled whisky from Tangier to Spain, and one spring I lived on a houseboat on Dal Lake in Kashmir from where I rode horseback intoTibet.

Growing up in Manhattan, I studied painting at the High School of Music & Art. At Cornell University I chased beautiful but unconquerable Ivy League coeds, rowed on the crew, and dreamed of becoming a great writer. I sailed to Europe, settled on the decadent Mediterranean island of Ibiza, and wrote my first novel. I sent it to a literary agent in New York. G. P. Putnam’s Sons published it.

Was it really as easy and as quick as that? Of course not. I was lucky. And determined.

I taught at UCLA graduate extension school, with Betsy Drake and Cary Grant among my pupils. I became a correspondent to the Middle East for NBC. And I kept writing books.

In 1970, I created a writing event which became the Howard Hughes Autobiography Hoax. Many believe that the threat of the book’s publication, with its revelations of the Hughes-Nixon bribes, caused Nixon to approve the Watergate break-in.

My reward in 1972 for these accusations (and lunacy) was 16 months in three federal prisons.

Over time I wrote write 20 books that were published to varying degrees of success in the USA by Putnam, McGraw-Hill, and Simon & Schuster, as well as translated into many languages.

All of my books are on Nook and Kindle at affordable prices: $2.99 to $5.99. That’s less expensive than a paperback and half the price of a movie. A good read is one of the amazing pleasures offered to us by civilization.

“Move over, Butch and Sundance, it’s not that I love you both less, just that I’ve come to love Pancho and Tom more”–  said the New York Times Book Review about 
Tom Mix and Pancho Villa
,
 which I believe is my best book.
Trial
,
 followed by 
Daddy’s Girl
,
and
Final Argument
– all legal thrillers – are the top sellers.

My manuscripts, notes, journals and correspondence are stored permanently at the Center for American History at the University of Texas (Austin), which acquired the archive in 2013.
 

(continued ...)   
 

Further descriptions and reviews:
 

A Legal Thriller
 

“Terrific! Don’t begin this book at bedtime or you’ll be up all night . . . 
Trial
 is like a birchbark canoe or a seven-layer cake. You can go crazy trying to figure out how it’s made, and it’s made by a master.” — Caroline See, 
Los Angeles Times
 

“Riveting legal edge-of-the-seater, has Texas and American justice systems by the tail.” — 
Daily Telegraph
 (London) 

“Jet-propelled . . . colorful, down-and-dirty characters . . . most readers will want to read this at one sitting.” — 
Library Journal
 

A thrilling adventure into the real world of criminal law, a powerful novel that deals with murder, the morality of justice and the perils of love, Clifford Irving’s book sets a new standard for courtroom fiction.

A Texas lawyer, Warren Blackburn, defends two accused murderers in two separate cases. One of his clients is a former beauty queen and brazen owner of a topless nightclub, who shot her multimillionaire doctor lover – she claims – in self-defense; the other is a homeless illegal alien accused of killing a man for his wallet.

Without warning, the two cases become one, and Warren’s entire life and career are threatened.

William Safire in The New York Times called 
Trial
 “the novel of the year.”

A Legal Thriller
 

“A courtroom thriller, a mean streets thriller, a Florida cracker thriller, a gritty prison thriller, and an Everyman study of good and evil all rolled into one. And every part of it is terrific. What a wonderful piece of storytelling!”— Donald Westlake, 
The New York Times
 

“Only a handful of American authors have ever been able to transform murder and infidelity into poetry, and Irving is one of those writers . . . Not to be missed.”— Donald Porter, 
Mystery News

 
“Two cliffhanger trials, a moral crisis, violence, love . . . it’s all here.” — 
Mail on Sunday
 (London)
 

The startling story of a district attorney who, twelve  years after sending a convicted murderer to Death Row, returns to the same courtroom to try to save that same man’s life. A masterly tale of murder, guilt, and infidelity, set in Florida and featuring that rarest of heroes – a lawyer with a conscience.

Can a lawyer represent a murderer he once prosecuted? The legal establishment insists he can’t.

Final Argument
 is the story of Ted Jaffe’s war – at the risk of his career, his marriage, his personal safety – to free a man he believes he has grievously wronged.

The London Daily Express hailed it as “a spellbinding courtroom drama.”

The Life of the Greatest Art Forger of Our Time
 

“The wild, true story of three men who raped the art world . . . one of the most sophisticated suspense sagas of our time . . . fantastic.” — 
Chicago Tribune
 

“
Fake!
 is a delightfully vicious book, a joy to read and contemplate.” — Pablo Picasso
 

Elmyr de Hory was an elegant Jewish-Hungarian aristocrat whom World War II had stripped of everything but his genius at imitating Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Renoir, and other great painters of the 20
^th
 century.

Fernand Legros was a ruthless Egyptian homosexual who decreed that museums, art galleries and millionaire collectors should finance his love of luxury and pretty boys. And Real Lessard was an Adonis-like Canadian youth who began as Fernand’s protege and in the end out-dueled even the master in cunning.

Set in Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Texas, and the chic Mediterranean island of Ibiza, this is the tale of three rogues who bilked oil millionaires and movie stars, and turned the international art world upside down. It was the basis for filmmaker Orson Welles’ last major movie, “F For Fake,” which has become a cult classic.

The St. Louis Globe-Democrat called
Fake!
“a story to remember and revel in.”

“Fabulous, big, rawboned wild-blooded adventure tale that gives the sights and sounds and smells of a turn-of-the-century world real enough to touch. Clifford Irving has written a novel to make any writer proud and many readers grateful.” — 
Los Angeles Herald Examiner
 

“Move over, Butch and Sundance, it’s not that I love you both less, just that I’ve come to love Pancho and Tom more . . . a high-stepping, swashbuckling romance inspired by the unassailable historical fact that in his greenhorn youth, before he became a movie-star cowboy, Tom Mix rode in the company of the peasant revolutionary Pancho Villa . . . Who among us has not wished he’d grown up as romantically as Mix does here?” — 
New York Times Book Review
 

“Raucous, galloping fiction.” — 
San Francisco Chronicle
 

“Intelligently conceived, rapidly paced, attitudinally wry, earthy – a well-written, cannily contemporary tale about the past.” —
Dallas Times Herald