Book Review of "The Burning Man" by Phillip Margolin
Peter Hale, the son of Richard Hale, a four-year associate at Hale, Greaves,
Strobridg, Marquand, and Bartlett, has lived his life under the shadow of his father.
Despite having a high five-figure salary and fire-engine-red Porsche, Peter was constantly
trying to overcome the expectations of his high-class lawyer of a father, who was former
president of the Oregon State Bar. Handling only small-time cases did not present Peter
with the opportunity to outshine his father, who was also a second-team All-American
football player and National Champion wrestler, but when his father had a heart attack
and could no longer handle a million dollar case in which Peter had been helping him,
Peter could not let the opportunity pass. As Richard Hale lied helpless in a hospital bed,
he demanded Peter ask for a mistrial, but it seemed only to go in one ear of Peter's and
out the other.
Peter's boldness would be costly though, as he would lose the case and lose
his father. Richard did not die, but when he heard of his son's error he could not forgive
him and couldn't bare to see him anymore.
Only a fatherly instinct would force Richard to find a meager job for his helpless
son in a small town with an old friend who was looking for someone trying to regain status
as Peter now was. Whitaker was not as exciting as Portland was to Peter, but he began to
be accustomed to the town when he began his handling small criminal cases and ran into
an old friend who graduated with him from highschool, Steve Mancini. Steve, like Peter's
father, was a football star, but at the Division II level for the Whitaker State football
team. Hale became close...