Juice
A Novel
Published on 12. January 2016
224 pages
978-1-5040-2688-8 (ISBN)
Description
A corporate executive stands accused of a terrible crime in this searing legal drama from the bestselling author of
A Covenant with Death
The managing director of a popular West Coast television network, Joseph Harrison has everything a man could want: a successful career, a loving family, the promise of a bright and prosperous future. His life is one happy circumstance after another-until the fateful evening he gets behind the wheel after drinking three martinis and hits a pedestrian. Arraigned on charges of manslaughter, Harrison knows that his perfect world is lost forever.
But no one seems to think he should pay for his crime. Not the chairman of the network's board of directors, who immediately hires a slick Hollywood attorney to defend Harrison. Not the eyewitnesses to the accident, whose testimonies suddenly change when they step inside the courtroom. Not even the judge, who is pressured by the powerful interests that stand behind the defendant. Only Harrison believes that he should face the consequences-but is he brave enough to proclaim his guilt when the entire system wants to declare him innocent?
A dramatic portrait of one man's moral crisis and a blistering indictment of the influence of money and power in America, Juice is a masterful novel of suspense from one of the twentieth century's most original and captivating authors.
The managing director of a popular West Coast television network, Joseph Harrison has everything a man could want: a successful career, a loving family, the promise of a bright and prosperous future. His life is one happy circumstance after another-until the fateful evening he gets behind the wheel after drinking three martinis and hits a pedestrian. Arraigned on charges of manslaughter, Harrison knows that his perfect world is lost forever.
But no one seems to think he should pay for his crime. Not the chairman of the network's board of directors, who immediately hires a slick Hollywood attorney to defend Harrison. Not the eyewitnesses to the accident, whose testimonies suddenly change when they step inside the courtroom. Not even the judge, who is pressured by the powerful interests that stand behind the defendant. Only Harrison believes that he should face the consequences-but is he brave enough to proclaim his guilt when the entire system wants to declare him innocent?
A dramatic portrait of one man's moral crisis and a blistering indictment of the influence of money and power in America, Juice is a masterful novel of suspense from one of the twentieth century's most original and captivating authors.
More details
Person
Stephen Becker (1927-1999) was an American author, translator, and teacher whose published works include eleven novels and the English translations of Elie Wiesel's
The Town Behind the Wall and André Malraux's
The Conquerors. He was born in Mount Vernon, New York, and after serving in World War II, he graduated from Harvard University and studied in Peking and Paris, where he was friends with the novelist Richard Wright and learned French in part by reading detective novels. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Becker taught at numerous schools throughout the United States, including the University of Iowa, Bennington College, and the University of Central Florida in Orlando. His best-known works include
A Covenant with Death (1965), which was adapted into a Warner Brothers film starring Gene Hackman and George Maharis;
When the War Is Over (1969), a Civil War novel based on the true story of a teenage Confederate soldier executed more than a month after Lee's surrender; and the Far East trilogy of literary adventure novels:
The Chinese Bandit (1975),
The Last Mandarin (1979), and
The Blue-Eyed Shan (1982).
Content
- Cover Page
- Title Page
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
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- 20
- About the Author
- Copyright Page
