HOUSTON, May 29, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --
University of Houston Law Center
professor David Crump has found time
between lectures and grading exams to craft his fifth novel,
"Sudden Death Overtime," a courtroom thriller involving terrorists
and the international financiers who bankroll them.
"I'm unusual in academia, maybe, because I practiced law for
many years, ran a docket, and tried both civil and criminal cases,"
said Crump who joined the Law Center faculty in 1988 after years as
a Harris County prosecutor and
civil trial lawyer for firms in Dallas and Houston. "That experience is packed into this
novel."
The plot unravels the mystery of who financed the three
extremists who detonated a bomb in a packed football stadium
killing more than 100 spectators. When called upon by families of
the victims, the task seems too much even for Houston attorney Robert Herrick - the "Lawyer for the Little Guy"
- Crump's signature character in each of his novels. But he
reluctantly takes on the case to follow the money whether it leads
to banks, foundations, governments or wealthy ideologues. In the
process, his own life is at risk.
Though a mystery thriller, Crump insists the book also serves to
inform the public about the true nature of the legal system and the
people who practice in it, which is often distorted in popular
fiction.
"This novel is different," Crump said. "The story takes you
through a big case, step by step, and it authentically shows the
law and lawyers at work. You can watch the lawyers struggling with
Supreme Court cases that set the requirements for the complaint.
And you can see the other side react.
"You can follow the lawyers as they ask questions in
depositions and struggle with evidence rules about hearsay and
expert testimony. You observe as the lawyers use opposing tactics
in jury selection, witness examination and final arguments.
And there are realistic malpractice and ethical concerns about
issues like keeping big numbers of clients informed
and dealing with conflicts.
"This isn't your children's courtroom drama. It wasn't
written by John Grisham."
"The reviewers have recognized the realism in my books,"
Crump said. "My favorite quotation from one review said that you
couldn't get a clearer picture of how a big case is tried 'if you
were sitting in the front row of the jury box.' "
Crump feels so strongly about the real-world educational value
of his novel that he has proposed the Law Center host a Continuing
Legal Education (CLE) program for practicing attorneys to explain
and offer practical advice about sequential events in a large,
multi-plaintiff litigation as outlined in the novel.
Crump, who teaches Civil Procedure and Constitutional Law, in
addition to Criminal Law and Evidence, is also a prolific writer of
scholarly articles and books. But writing fiction did not come
easily.
"When I started on my first novel, 'Conflict of
Interest,' I thought I had enough experiences, enough funny
happenings, and enough disaster stories to write a novel. Man, was
that wrong!" he said.
"There are strategies, methods and a whole strange craft about
writing a novel. I got turned down everywhere with my original
manuscript. I couldn't even get an agent. So, I went to seminars,
attended writer's conferences and read books about how to do
it. Then, I took a year to rewrite the entire thing. I finally
got it published, and I felt like I'd won the lottery.
"A novel isn't about knowing the subject, although that
helps," he continued. "It's about Conflict! Conflict! Conflict!
among the Characters! Characters! Characters! The conflict has to
grow out of the characters, in a credible way. And it has to
persist until the end, in a way that some writers about writing
have described as keeping the characters in a crucible.
"And so, while my novels are realistic, I think,
and it's important to me for them to be realistic, I always
have to keep in mind that readers aren't asking
themselves, what am I going to learn from this book? Instead,
they're looking only incidentally at that - they want an intriguing
setting and details - but they're mainly watching
what conflicts the story is going to describe, and what
the characters are going to do about them."
"Sudden Death Overtime" is available on Amazon along with his
previous novels,"Conflict of Interest," "The Holding
Company," "Murder in Sugar Land,"
and "The Target Defendant."
University of Houston Law Center
Media Contacts: Carrie Anna
Criado, UH Law Center Executive Director of Communications
and Marketing, 713-743-2184, cacriado@central.uh.edu;
John T. Kling, UH Law Center
Communications Manager, 713-743-8298,
jtkling@central.uh.edu; or Stephen
B. Jablonski, Multimedia Specialist, 713-743- 1634,
sbjablon@central.uh.edu.
About the University of
Houston
The University of Houston is a Carnegie-designated Tier One
public research university recognized by The Princeton Review as
one of the nation's best colleges for undergraduate education. UH
serves the globally competitive Houston and Gulf Coast Region by providing
world-class faculty, experiential learning and strategic industry
partnerships. Located in the nation's fourth-largest city, UH
serves more than 40,900 students in the most ethnically and
culturally diverse region in the country.
About the University of Houston
Law Center
The University of Houston Law Center is the leading law school
in the nation's fourth-largest city. Founded in 1947, it is a
top-tier institution awarding Doctor of Jurisprudence (J.D.) and
Master of Laws (LL.M.) degrees. The Law Center is fully accredited
by the American Bar Association and is a member of the Association
of American Law Schools.
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