THE PAPER LAWYER

A legal novel that tries, and tries, to wrap its arms around
race, ethics, redemption, and immigration.

Camila Harrison, protagonist of Cisneros’ fourth legal thriller
(The Land Grant, 2012, etc.), is a hotshot lawyer in Austin, Texas,
engaged to a member of the Texas Supreme Court. She has a promising future, a
beautiful office, and a loving fiance. She’s also a bigot. Despite being
half-Mexican, Harrison hates and resents pretty much all minorities, and she
has a special hatred for undocumented immigrants. Harrison’s career falls apart
when emails she’s written containing racial slurs are leaked to the press. She
loses the fiance, the fancy job, and pretty much her entire life. A few months
later, she’s slumming it as a Social Security disability lawyer in Houston.
Cisneros has given himself quite a task and a long list of weighty questions.
What drives people to hate? Are forgiveness and redemption possible? Should they
be? Can readers get behind a person who is “surprised to find out that her
illegal-alien client could actually carry on a regular conversation.”? Harrison’s
path to redemption begins when she takes on her first federal case. Vicente
Aldama came to the United States illegally so he could pay for his daughter’s
lifesaving surgery. After Aldama is arrested and charged with money laundering,
Harrison is his only hope. Cisneros hits his stride when the legal machinations
and dark conspiracies start to emerge. Harrison goes on a crusade for justice
against corrupt police officers and the justice system as a whole. The problem
is that Harrison has a long road to redemption, and many readers just won’t
have the stomach for her journey. Even more puzzling, the racial subplot
fizzles out in the second half of the novel. It’s almost as if Cisneros lost
patience with his own setup and decided to write a more traditional legal
thriller instead. Cisneros deals with important and timely topics, and you can
tell he has a fundamentally optimistic view of the justice system and people’s
capacity for change. Ultimately, Cisneros succeeds too well in making his
protagonist unlikable.

A legal thriller short on thrills and long on social commentary.