This appears to be
the first book in a series featuring John Bookman, known as Book for
short. He is a university professor
lecturing in Constitutional Law at the University of Texas, hence the title of
the book. He is a bit of a loose cannon, reminding me of Jack Reacher in Lee
Child’s books, although much better educated. Book is an expert at Taekwondo,
which helps him get out of the tricky situations he sometimes finds himself in.
Book is a famous
professor, appearing on television and having written several books on the
subject of constitutional law and therefore gets many letters asking for help
and I would think that these are going to provide the basis for more books in
the future. Book has discovered that he has a mutant gene that means he will
eventually get Alzheimer’s Disease, and so is determined never to get married
and have children, in case he passes on the gene to them. It also makes him
unafraid of dying, which makes him rather Gung Ho when finding himself in dangerous
situations.
So, this story
starts when he receives a letter from a former intern of his, saying that he
has proof that illegal fracking is taking place in his town of Marfa, in south
Texas.
An intern (which I
had to look up) is a senior student who is attached to a professor as his
assistant during their last term at the University.
Apparently, this
intern, Nathan Jones, who is working as a lawyer for the firm of Dunn & Co,
saved Book’s life when he was Book’s intern, so naturally he wants to go and
help him. We only learn later in the book as to how Nathan saved Book’s life.
So, off he goes on
his Harley Davidson motorbike, taking Nadine Honeywell, his current young
female intern with him on the pillion seat.
When they get to
Marfa they find that Nathan was killed in a road accident the night before, and
although the Sheriff says that he ran off the road at high speed and hit an oil
derrick, Book is sure that it was murder. And so Book sets out to find where
this proof is of the illegal fracking that no one knows anything about, and who
killed Nathan Jones. His suspicions lie with Billy Bob Burnett, the head of the
biggest fracking firm in the area, and the main client of Nathan’s firm of
lawyers.
He has Nadine to
help him and also Carla Kent, an environmental news reporter who has her own
reasons for wanting to see the stopping of the fracking firm run by Billy Bob
Burnett. And so we follow his adventures until they reach a dramatic conclusion
on the shore of the Rio Grande River on the border between Texas and Mexico.
Mark Gimenez has
written several books set in this area, which he obviously knows well.
I like this new character of his, Professor Bookman
and I look forward to reading more of his books. You certainly learn a lot
about fracking in this book, which is very interesting seeing how it is
starting in our country now. What is not so interesting is all the stuff about
constitutional law which is boring and really unnecessary, unless you are an
American interested in their law
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