The novel gives the reader courtroom drama, pitting Charlie and Street against Joel Haricot, a veteran of the Great War, and adept legal mastermind. This novel is a very good book and a lot of legal jargon. Would recommend it to readers.

If Permanent Press had a prestige novel, To Account for Murder by William C. Whitbeck would it. The novel presents a fictionalized version of real life events that happened in Michigan. In 1945, Senator Warren G. Hooper was murdered in a gangland-style slaying. To this day, the murder case has never been solved. William C. Whitbeck, the author of the novel, also works as Chief Judge of the Michigan Court. He presents us with the tale of one Charlie Cahill, a disabled vet, prosecutor, and son of an Irish bootlegger.

Set in Lansing during 1945 and into 1946, Whitbeck paints a picture of a strange yet familiar world. Charlie Cahill narrates the novel in a classic deathbed confession set in the mid-1990s. The hospital bed mirrors his recovery from grievous wounds he suffered during the D-Day invasion. During his convalescence, he meets Sarah Maynard who works as a nurse in the hospital ward. Sarah saves this broken man, having one less arm, and pulling him back from the black abyss of alcoholic despair. The resulting affair is less than convenient for both involved, since Sarah is the wife of Michigan Senator Harry Maynard, an abusive drunk.

The machinations that lead Charlie to murder Senator Maynard act as prologue to the ensuing courtroom drama and political races. Charlie is recruited by Judge “Ironpants” Hennessey to assist one Hubbell Street, a drinkin’ whorin’ prosecuting attorney with Macbeth-like ambition and Falstaffian appetites. This is where To Account for Murder, with its historical setting and lively characters akin to HBO prestige fare like Boardwalk Empire, meets the murderer-working-in-law-enforcement of Dexter. Charlie and Street work to engineer a frame-up of two button men in the Jewish Purple Gang. The Purples put a serious hurt on Charlie’s brother and might have killed their father.

Whitbeck spices up the proceedings with relevant historical details, details usually smoothed over or erased entirely by historians who mistake historical narrative as harmless family-friendly infotainment. These details include a vicious anti-Semitism and racism that exists as a vast undersong to the omnipresent corruption and influence-peddling that permeates the capital city. The reader is also reminded that the United States had a problem with illegal intoxicants flooding our cities, this time coming from the North. While bootlegging and gangsterism acquired the amber hue of nostalgia, the United States faces a similar problem with narcotrafficking and the concomitant social ills it breeds. With a constitutional amendment repealing Prohibition and Canadian Club on liquor store shelves, the solution to the endless intractable War on Drugs may be staring us in the face.

The novel gives the reader a harrowing courtroom drama, pitting Charlie and Street against the formidable Joel Haricot, a legless veteran of the Great War, and adept legal mastermind. As with any moral tale, triumphs come at a dear cost, along with unexpected reversals and betrayals.
The only quibble this reviewer has with the novel is a revelation that occurs on the last page of the last chapter. While in a certain light it answers many questions, it has the unintended effect of undermining the entire narrative. Whether it was a justifiable pay-off or a gratuitous manipulation depends on the attitude of the reader. For this reviewer, it’s a hung jury.

http://driftlessareareview.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/to-account-for-murder-by-wil... ( )

This is an intricately plotted story about law, politics and corruption in 1940s Michigan. The murder of a state senator is at the core of the mystery, and the story unfolds around a war hero who has conspired with the wife of the murdered man, and is maneuvered into helping a corrupt prosecutor become governor to keep his secret. It is told in flashback style by the narrator who is near the end of his life, recalling events from 50 years past, to his grown child who then narrates to the reader. The atmosphere of Lansing in 1946 is vividly evoked—corruption is rife, violence abounds, criminals politicians and judges deal, and double-deal continually. There is drama and suspense as the story unfolds but the flashbacks tend to be more of a distraction, leaving the reader with a slight feeling of being manipulated. This is reinforced by the surprise twist at the end of the novel, which has no bearing on the plot or its resolution and therefore seems gratuitous. ( )

I read where “To Account for Murder” was an on-again, off-again labor for William C Whitbeck over a couple of decades. The result, Mr. Whitbeck’s debut work of fiction, stands as a combination historical novel, thriller, and political exposé. Mr. Whitbeck, himself a high-ranking Michigan appellate judge and close confidant to more than one Michigan governor, knows whereof he speaks. His research into the corrupt legal and political environment of Detroit and Lansing before and after World War II must have been exhaustive, given the detail here.

“To Account for Murder” delves into the sordid and appalling details the political corruption charges and counter-charges of the time – this forms the bulk of the book – and wraps a personal-history yarn around it for presentation’s sake. Perhaps he should have played the legal procedure card less, and the character-development card more. As I started this, the conscienceless, ruthless ambition on all sides rings true (I have some first-hand experience in the political arena), but as the machinations and the murders mount up, I grew numb to it. Mr. Whitbeck’s compulsion to get it all down on paper costs his plot and his characters a measure of reality, and the cardboard-cutout aspect of his characters takes over. Likewise, I find legal procedures fairly easy to follow in fiction, but the book portrays so many in-court and ex parte moves, motions, and counter-motions, ranging from simple persuasion to murder and blackmail, that they lose their immediacy and generate little tension.

The author does manage one nuanced character: the first-person narrator Charlie Cahill, who has little trouble ignoring his conscience – at least he has one to ignore. He also has a haunting personal history, in which he relives the terror of the D-Day invasion. In an interesting device, our narrator confesses to the reader that he has killed the infamous state Senator, and needs to direct the investigation away from himself and the murder victim’s wife, whom he loves. This, however, is only the first lie of what feel like hundreds in this book. I’ll try not to spoil it any more for the interested reader.

The reader will begin to wonder how Michigan’s government ever made it through the period, so pervasive is the corruption on display here.

http://bassoprofundo1.blogspot.com/2010/11/to-account-for-murder-by-william-c.ht... ( )

I really enjoyed this book although it took me awhile to read it. I enjoyed the fact that it was partially based on a true story. I recommend this to anyone interested in a political mystery. ( )