Hanging Judge

October 14, 2013
Despite the author’s credentials—Ponsor is a sitting federal judge who in 2000 presided over Massachusetts’s first capital case in more than 50 years—his attempt to draw on his professional experience for a legal thriller falls flat. Judge David Norcross, who has the requisite tragic personal backstory (a dead wife), is assigned the case of twice-convicted drug dealer Clarence Hudson, who gunned down another drug dealer and a nurse caught in the cross fire in a rundown Holyoke, Mass., neighborhood. A political decision to charge Hudson federally exposes him to the death penalty. That the case is problematic early on undercuts some of the tension from the trial scenes, while a gratuitous act of violence near the end undermines what hitherto has been a realistic portrayal of a judge’s life. Unconvincing interludes with a potential romantic partner don’t help (“An enormous moment was rolling toward him, and it was hoisting David’s innards like a swelling wave”). Agent: Robin Straus, Robin Straus Agency.

November 15, 2013
This gripping legal thriller is told from the unique perspective of the federal court judge presiding over the first death penalty case in Massachusetts in more than 50 years. The moral issue here is highlighted by an occasional chapter dedicated to the telling of the true story of an 1806 hanging, the result of a verdict that was reversed 200 years later. A drive-by shooting is at the root of the present-day case. A Hispanic drug dealer and an innocent bystander are killed, and a sharp cop ends up nabbing the getaway driver, who gives the name, Moon Hudson, as the shooter. Moon is a family man, married with a baby, but he also has a past that the jury will never hear about. The state's case hinges on the word of a gangbanger who has agreed to testify in exchange for a lighter sentence, and Moon's life hangs in the balance. The death penalty case is compelling, but Ponsor fails to fully develop his characters, leaving a bit of an emotional void. Richard North Patterson tackled a similar subject in Conviction (2005) with considerably more passion, but perhaps the lesser passion here stems from Ponsor's decision to use an impartial judge as his narrator.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)