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You Can Vote for the 2014 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction
Readers have until June 30 to vote online for the winner of the 2014 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. The prize, which is sponsored by ABA Journal and the University of Alabama School of Law, is intended to recognize a work of fiction that best exemplifies the role of lawyers in society. The three finalists this year are:
- Ronald H. Balson for Once We Were Brothers
- John Grisham for Sycamore Row
- Elizabeth Strout for The Burgess Boys
The prize was first handed out in 2011. The winner that year was John Grisham for The Confession.
Michael Connelly won in 2012 for his novel The Fifth Witness.
And last year’s winner was Stanford law prof Paul Goldstein for Havana Requiem.
The award is named after author Harper Lee, whose novel To Kill A Mockingbird, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961.
I propose Peter Murphy, A Matter for the Jury (No Exit Press, July 2014)
which, though historical (set in England in 1960s) demonstrates very well the role of a defence lawyer with a client accused of a capital crime whose fate turns not on evidential rabbits out of last minute hats but on a point of law argued, eventually, in the Court of Appeal. It is supremely a legal thriller. Also great description of the life and work of a hangman, sympathetically portrayed. A quiet future classic.
http://www.petermurphyauthor.co.uk/novels/a-matter-for-the-jury