The Alligator Man

August 12, 2013
In this straightforward, character-driven stand-alone, Sheehan (The Lawyer’s Lawyer and two other Jack Tobin legal thrillers) clearly distinguishes between heroes and villains. Wealthy Roy Johnson has retired to Gladestown, Fla., after escaping with a golden parachute from his company, Dynatron, whose collapse destroyed the jobs, health insurance, and pensions of 20,000 employees. When Roy is reported missing one morning, some people at first presume that an alligator snatched him on his nightly drunken walk. Then a local teen comes forward to report a hit-and-run, followed by a witness’s report of a man leaving a bar in a nearby town on that night, muttering about killing someone. Police quickly identify the man as former Dynatron employee Billy Fuller. Enter Kevin Wylie, an unemployed defense lawyer visiting his dying father in Billy’s hometown. Sheehan paints a sympathetic portrait of Kevin, Billy, and others on the side of the law, while crafting an ending that will satisfy readers who like to see justice prevail.

August 1, 2013
Sheehan (The Law of Second Chances, 2008, etc.) weaves a father-son reconciliation melodrama into a Florida courtroom clash sparked by murder and corruption. Kevin Wylie is the top-ranked associate in Bernie Stang's Miami, Fla., criminal defense firm. While contemplating setting up shop for himself, he learns of a dark secret behind the high-rolling Stang's defense of drug dealers. With that, Stang tells Wylie the town isn't big enough for both of them. Struggling with that threat, Kevin gets word that his long-estranged father, Tom, also an attorney, is dying of cancer. Kevin's asked to visit Tom in the north Florida town of St. Albans. Meantime, Roy Johnson, former CEO of Dynatron, a bankrupt international energy company, has been reported killed in a deliberate hit-and-run accident near his lavish estate at Gladestown at the Everglades' edge. Johnson profited from a $100 million buyout shortly before Dynatron went belly-up, leaving employees jobless and with no insurance or pension funds. It's no surprise Johnson's been run down on the road, but the real shock is that Billy Fuller, a longtime friend of Tom Wylie, is accused of the murder. Despite the great premise--an Enron-Lehman-Brothers-CEO-pirate becoming alligator fare after being knocked into the swamp--Sheehan's characters are too easily slotted into neat spots on the storyboard: Kevin's an angst-ridden, earnest Tom Cruise type, with a Matthew McConaughey type stepping in as fisherman/guide/auxiliary sheriff/vigilante Carlisle Buchanan. Readers meet the standard judge who dislikes the brash defense attorney, enjoy the requisite father-son reconciliation, and watch as one love affair crashes and another simmers back home in St. Albans, all while Sheehan runs past three conclusions before he terminates every loose plot thread. Fun stuff, albeit less tense and conflicted than the works of Scott Turow and John Grisham.

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September 15, 2013

At first glance, Sheehan's latest legal thriller (after The Lawyer's Lawyer) is about the gruesome murder (by alligator) of villain extraordinaire corporate CEO Roy Johnson and the ensuing trial of the man accused of committing that murder, newspaper columnist Billy Fuller, who lost everything when Johnson's company went belly up. Though Sheehan deftly lays out the elements of the sheriff's department's murder investigation and leads the reader through the engaging set of twists and turns in attorney Kevin Wylie's defense of Billy, the novel's true strength lies in its characters--major and minor. There's sheriff's auxiliary officer Carlisle Buchanan, who learned to navigate the Florida Everglades at his father's side; Kevin's own father, Tom, and artist Kate Parker, Tom's longtime companion; savvy prosecutor Jeanette Truluc; Freddie Jenkins, the teenager who may have been the only witness to the murder; Bernie Stang, Kevin's former employer; David Lefter, Bernie's "numbers guy"; and even bartender George Russo--each with his or her own stake in the outcome of the proceedings. VERDICT It is the not only the development of each character's individual story but Sheehan's ability to compel his readers to care about them that sets this book apart from other legal thrillers.--Nancy McNicol, Hamden P.L., CT

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