Discount Price: $7.99
Price fluctuation possible.
How soon does it ship: Normal ship time within one day
Shipping? Absolutely FREE if you qualify for Super Saver Shipping.
Type of bind: Mass Market Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9780345381842
ISBN number: 034538184X
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 544
Printing Date: December 04, 1993
Publishing house: Ballantine Books
Release Date: December 04, 1993
Sale Popularity Level: 65561
Studio: Ballantine Books
Other books you might be interested in perusing:
Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Mary Carelli, one of the most powerful women in TV journalism, is charged with the murder of Mark Ransom, America's most eminent novelist. Her attorney, Christopher Paget, sets out to shock the courtroom with revelations about Ransom as a twisted sexual predator. But as the trial unfolds, it is Paget who will be surprised...by Mary's secret motive for murder...by evidence that Mary is lying...by a woman prosecutor who believes Mary invented the story of rape...and by an enigmatic judge with an agenda of her own....
Amazon.com Review:
The core of Richard North Patterson's legal thrillers is characterization, and Degree of Guilt, the novel that relaunched his career in 1993, features two captivating individuals: Christopher Paget and Mary Carelli. Paget, the upstart hero of Patterson's 1979 Edgar-winning The Lasko Tangent, is now a sophisticated trial lawyer doing his best to raise a teenage son in San Francisco. He's a man to be admired: famous for bringing down the president in a financial scandal, he has settled into the comfortable life of a successful attorney. His life is transformed, however, when his former lover (and mother of his son), Mary Carelli, pays a visit.
The novel begins in a San Francisco hotel room as Mary, now an NBC journalist, surveys the torn landscape of author Mark Ransom's apartment. Ransom is, or was, America's most eminent writer. As she tells the police, Ransom had uncovered new recorded evidence of an affair between a long-dead starlet and a now-sainted senator (shades of Marilyn Monroe and JFK). While Ransom and Mary were listening to the tapes, she claims, he tried to rape her and she killed him in self-defense. Mary turns to Paget to defend her in what becomes a complex case of missing and conflicting evidence. Old emotions are stirred between the two just as Paget begins to doubt Mary's innocence.
The suspense of Degree of Guilt is grounded in the twists and turns of the trial at the novel's center, but just as compelling is the emerging history of Mary and Paget, and Paget's struggles to keep his son out of the media frenzy surrounding his mother's case. As well, Patterson addresses the deeper ethical questions that face many lawyers as they decide which cases to take and which evidence to use. Capturing archetypal characters and situations, Degree of Guilt becomes a parable of American law. --Patrick O'Kelley
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers -
This book started out extremely well, carried on strongly through the middle and then, though it tailed off significantly in the last section, concluded satisfactorily. Had the final portion been as good as the start and the middle, it would rate five stars.
The strengths here are the development of the main characters and the care of the presentation of the legal machinations. While not at the level of a Scott Turow book in these categories, it is infinitely better in these respects than John Grisham's books or most others in this crowded field. At the same time, the characters' self-examination avoids the brooding length that Turow's characters indulge in, which preserves this book's proper place in the "page turner" realm.
The book unfolds gradually and events are not revealed in chronological order, so there is a steady stream of revelations, and a constant change in the appearance of events (realistic, in this sense, to an actual criminal case) that is highly engaging, until the revelations peter out about two-thirds of the way through. The last portion of the book is less realistic in its courtroom aspects and less interesting in the way it reveals what is going on. Basically, you are just waiting to see what happens. Patterson does skillfully add interest to the book by including thinly veiled, but fictionally altered, versions of real-life people--Kennedy, Marilyn Monroe, and Jane Fonda to name three.
I do have one significant reservation. The book involves an allegation of rape and, in the litigation of that allegation, discusses a broad array of sexual assaults and sexual abuses of women repeatedly and in detail. Patterson's discusion of them is uniformly "politically correct," which I mean in a good way. He emphasizes the seriousness of sexual assault, the challenges of prosecuting it, presents the detail much the way it would actually be presented in court, and offers no excuses for it. Nonetheless, at various points it crossed my mind that the detailed recounting of the sexual abuse was exploitive. While presented in a facially appropriate way, there is a lot of it presented in the book, so much that one suspects it is being used in part on the principle that sex sells--even abusive sex. Whether or not that is the case, I would warn readers, especially female readers: there is a lot of sexual abuse of women in this book--rape, pretend rape, extorted sex. It is certainly not approved of, but it is there, and if reading those words makes you cringe, or you can't read about such conduct abstractly, you probably want to skip this one.
Rated by buyers -
I recently completed this witer"s newest work, Exile, and wanted to back and read some of his earliest work. The book is well thought out and its characters are extremely well developed. In many ways, I found similarities to his recently published work. In both cases, one finds an idealistic attotney who takes a case that is high profile in nature with little upside existing for him. He is a staunch defender of finding the truth, even it will lead to personal harm or harm to the case that is being tried. This book also features a strong woman who is extrmely well developed. The cortroom scenes are compelling and this makes for an exceptionally satisfying read. The only flaws are in his idealistic appproach, yet these are minor when the totality of this work is taken into account.
Rated by buyers 
-
Over the years, whenever I've gotten into a discusion of books with people, the topic always comes to legal thrillers. Without hesitation I have recommended this book to every single person who likes the genre, and there has never been a person that's been disappointed by their experience reading this.
Patterson's story and delivery are pitch-perfect, and the courtroom scenese and investigation prior to the trial are top notch. Unlike many of the modern legal thrillers, a great deal of this book takes place in the courtroom. The mystery of the book in regards to who is guilty and who isn't, will leave readers guessing until the final 20 pages. There is plenty of action, and some fairly erotic love scenes as well.
This is destined to be a classic, if it isn't already.
Rated by buyers -
This is a paramount plot, one of a kind for smart guys, where the reader is forced to think deeply in order to medidate about all the offered scattered events so as to understand how the situations unfold and relate
Characters are very well created and developed and some of them relate to RNP other books.
As we approach the ending, we expect Judge Masters ruling with total anxiety, however this is solved fast paced in just one chapter leaving a bitter taste after 500 pages of legal wrangling
Mr. Patterson, if you could made such a great plot you could have worked better not in the outcome but in the way the ending reveals in this book, I did not like it and that is why I take one star away. Next time do a step by step approach instead of letting loose the whole stuff in the nick of time
Rated by buyers -
Fantastic!!!!. This book is going to go into my top 100 paperback reads of my life. I mean this is a book that has a basic plot which is kind of steered in such a manner to make it really look more complicated. The beauty of the book is the mixing of the flashbacks with the present. I mean few authors given this basic plot line could have told a story which is pushed forward by such amount of sheer relentless tension and suspense for over 500 odd pages. Mr paget is a attorney acting as defence for an alleged murderer who happens to be his divorced wife who in turn claims that she shot the man she is accused of killing in self defence in the process of avoiding getting raped. The whole book unravels chapter by chapter where Mr Paget and ourselves dont know whether to believe the story of the accused story or the evidence of the prosecutor. Evidence doesnt support the theory of the defendant and we keep hurtling through the pages as Mr paget battles it out in the courtroom trying to convince the court that there isnt full and incontrovertible evidence pointing to his clients guilt. The twists and turns, the lies and deception will thrill you and the emotional aspect of the book has been delt superbly. This book is legal drama thriller interspersed with emotional family drama. Enjoy...
Find other books like this one:
