The Mortgage
(since reissued as The Deal)Sabin Willett
Mandarin, paperback, 570 pages, £5.99
Review by Gerald Houghton (1996)
The warning signs go up just inside the front cover: Sabin Willett is a trial lawyer who practises in Boston. The Mortgage (catchy title) reads like a 570 page novel by a trial lawyer who practises in Boston.
It's all Big Money and shiny tower blocks. The legal brains at Boston's Freer Motley have negotiated the deal and its $840 million mortgage. Except, at 3.32 in the a.m. someone slipped the computer one and traded million for a mere thousand. In the forensic fall-out partner Sam Whitaker's brains are blown out, and few tag it for suicide. Bitter erstwhile comrade John Shepard is bagged and calls on friend and colleague Ed Mulcahy to defend him. Can the young maverick deduce the truth before time's up?
Guess. The only mystery running through The Mortgage is how Willett hangs it out for as long as he does, as though size and value were somehow kindred spirits. His prose is leaden, teeth-clenching stuff littered with artless dialogue that veers between inane and incomprehensible. (Example: 'John's testosterone is about to croak a billion-dollar LBO.') The oceans of computer speak are grinding. Willett's (few) women are laughable, the men only marginally better; not so much characters as walking suits. A suggestion that opposing trial lawyers retire to the locker room with a ruler would certainly save them (and us) a great deal of time, but such irony is both heavy-handed and in woefully short supply.
Still, grudging respect for any novel that dares review itself. This from only page 55: 'But as he reread the document, the type began to swim. His mind would not stay focused. It began to shake loose and roam.' I know what you mean, Mr Willett. I know what you mean.