Shark Skin Suite-Tim Dorsey

Shark Skin Suite

Tim Dorsey

Morrow, Jan 27 2015, $26.99

ISBN: 9780062240019

In Florida, Serge A. Storms kidnaps foreclosure paralegal Brook Campanella although she is unaware of being abducted as they share plenty of sex heading towards Key West,  Meanwhile the police hunt the pair in connection to a pair of recent murders.  Though Serge feels somewhat insulted as the TV news anchor barely mentions his twenty other kills, Brook faints.  The couple goes separate ways as each diligently but differently studies to become a lawyer.  Brook attends law school; on the other hand Serge assiduously watches legal thriller movies like Absence of Malice. 

Shapiro, Heathcote-Mendacious and Blatt hires Brook after she saves the home of Hilda and Vernon Rockford from the First American Bank foreclosure.  She sits as her second chair to equally inexperienced Shelby Lang on the Sheffield et al v. Consolidated Financial class action suit.  The institution robo-signed mortgages ignoring whether the person could meet payments, and when they failed to remit repossessed the home to resell it.  Judge Kennesaw Montgomery Boone makes it clear from the onset he believes corporations do no wrong; people do wrong.  However, neither the defendants nor the Judge factored in Brook’s secret weapon Serge.  With his sidekick Coleman, Serge interprets the law applying his unique methodology to insure justice is served except when Molly, in her distinctive appealing way, serves as judge and executioner.

The eighteenth Serge A. Storms thriller is a cutting satirical look at American corporatocracy economic system in which big government (in this case the courts) enables big business; which in turn enables Big Government, etc. in an exclusive symbiotic mutualistic system.  Fast-paced with the usual jocular irreverence (see Tiger Shrimp Tango), Serge and his teammates are at their American exceptionalism best.

Harriet Klausner