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PEACOCK SHOWS COLORS

September 14, 2008 12:16 am

JUSTIN PEACOCK is a former multimedia jour- nalist and now is a practicing attorney.

He's blended his background well in a debut legal thriller, "A Cure for Night."

Attorney Joel Deveraux takes a spectacular fall from the halls of a prestigious law firm to the Brooklyn Public Defenders Office.

He meets all kinds of people there, and he is charged with defending them, regardless of their guilt or innocence.

He slogs along until his boss offers him the chance to be second chair on a high-profile murder case, where a black drug dealer from the projects is accused of murdering a white Brooklyn college student.

Watching the lawyers piece together their defense is fascinating, and Peacock's characters are intriguing.

His dialogue, including a good bit of street slang, is a bit distracting at times, and I couldn't decide whether it made the characters more real, or more like caricatures.

Regardless, the book is solid, with lots of surprises lurking within its pages.

Laura L. Hutchison is an editor at The Free Lance-Star.