Being out of town all week in Dallas at my company's 2015 National Sales Meeting (at the Gaylord Texan in Grapevine) kept me very busy, but a little bit of wind-down reading time before bed each night got me through Frederick Busch's Closing Arguments (1991, Ticknor and Fields, 288 pages).This is the story of Mark Brennan, a Vietnam vet lawyer practicing in upstate New York. Brennan is dealing with what we would now call post traumatic stress disorder, a troubled marriage, and children struggling to find their way in the world. This all comes to a head when he is asked to defend a young woman accused of murder, and who claims that the death was an accident as a result of consensual rough sex that went too far.
The reader is brought along for the somewhat predictable but nonetheless compelling descent into darkness as Brennan tries to outrun the ghosts of his past while making a mess of the present. And as Brennan notes, "the innocent are not protected."
This was my fourth Busch book, and was a good read, although not as good as his novel Girls (1997) or his short story collection Rescue Missions (his last published work before his death in 2006). The Night Inspector (1999, a PEN/Faulkner finalist) was also very good.
3.5 stars out of 5. Very solid. Not spectacular, but it did keep me turning the pages.
Books this year: 5
Total pages: 1,692
New authors: 2
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