Book Talk: Scottoline, ‘Running from the Law’

Aside from being a great read, Lisa Scottoline’s “Running from the Law” (2022, 448 pages in hardback format) is an excellent guide on how to play the card game, Poker. Rita Morrone, the protagonist, is a defense lawyer, and a poker player who usually beats her father and his cronies. She’s been learning the about “tells” (movements or expressions that indicate a person’s level of satisfaction with his cards) and the fine art of “bluffing” (pretending to have a great hand when you know you hold a poor one) since she was a kid, sitting in on one her father’s weekly games in the back of his butcher shop.

As we find out in the opening pages, Rita can adapt her poker skills to the courtroom. The trial in which she’s representing the defendant was delayed the previous week because of the death of the prosecutor’s mother. The jury has been told that there was a death in one of the counsel’s family, but they were not told which one. So, Rita showed up in court in a black suit, black shoes, dark circles around her eyes, and a demeaner that telegraphed depression.

Although she grabs a bunch of sympathy from the jury, she incurs the wrath of the presiding judge who calls her bluff in his chambers after court. But Rita has learned to “believe” in the bluff. Peering at the judge through her imaginary black veil, she says, “Your Honor, I would never do such a thing! I couldn’t even begin to do such a thing. Who can divine what a jury is thinking, much less control it?”