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Lucinda Hayes #3
Chilling Effect: A Lucinda Hayes Mystery
Equal parts courtroom drama, intellectual journey, and character study, Chilling Effect is Marianne Wesson's most provocative Lucinda Hayes mystery to date. When attorney Lucinda Hayes reluctantly agrees to represent the mother of a brutally slain child, she must convince the court that the makers of a pornographic film are liable for the murder. As the case unfolds, Lucinda calls upon all her personal strength and legal talent, facing down her own ghosts as well as the powerful entertainment industry's star lawyers. In Chilling Effect, Wesson affirms the power of free speech to inspire the best and the worst human behavior and explores the tension between freedom and accountability.
360 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2004
1 person is currently reading
19 people want to read
About the author
Marianne Wesson
9 books7 followersMarianne Wesson (known to friends as Mimi) grew up in Dallas, Texas, graduated from Vassar College and the University of Texas Law School, and began teaching at the University of Colorado Law School in 1976. She lives on a ranch in Larimer County, Colorado, with her husband Ben Herr, ten llamas, various cats and dogs, and visiting elk, coyotes, and bears.
As a scholar, Mimi is best known for her contributions to the debate about pornography in feminism and law; her work on the subject has been published in law reviews as well as in more popular publications such as The Women’s Review of Books. Pornography and its relationship to free speech and to our troubled culture is the subject of her newest book, Chilling Effect. She has published many academic articles over the years, as well as a treatise about the Colorado Criminal Code called Crimes and Defenses in Colorado (which she believes nobody has ever actually read from cover to cover). Her principal teaching interests are criminal law, evidence, trial practice, and law and literature. Mimi's teaching has been honored with the Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Colorado three times; she has also been named a President's Teaching Scholar, the University's highest form of recognition for teaching excellence. She holds the Wolf-Nichol Fellowship at the Law School, a position set aside to honor teaching achievement. She also served as Interim Dean of the Law School in 1995-96, an experience that persuaded her once and for all that academic administration is not her calling.
Mimi is an experienced trial lawyer as well. In 1980, after four years of teaching, she took a leave of absence to serve for two years as a federal prosecutor in the Office of the United States Attorney in Denver. During those years she tried many federal criminal cases, including kidnapping, firearms and explosives cases, extortion, and white collar crimes. After she returned to teaching in 1982, she continued to take on occasional trial work to keep her skills from growing rusty and because nothing else has the thrill of the courtroom. In the mid-1980s she co-represented the plaintiff in Simmons v. Simmons, the first case in Colorado (and one of the first in the country) to recognize that a woman has a right to sue her former husband for abusive injuries he inflicted on her during their marriage. In 1991, Mimi was appointed by the California Supreme Court to represent a death row inmate, Jerry Grant Frye. His case is now in federal habeas corpus proceedings.
The experience of representing Jerry inspired Mimi to write her first novel, Render Up the Body, about a former prosecutor and rape victims' advocate who is appointed to represent a death row inmate. Render Up the Body is dedicated to Jerry Frye. It was published by HarperCollins in North America, Headline Press in the U.K., Goldmann Publishers in Germany, Editions Stock in France, and for other translations into Norweigan, Dutch, Portuguese, Hebrew, and Latvian. It appeared in the U.S. in January of 1998, where it was also a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and a finalist for the Colorado Book Award for fiction.
Her second novel, A Suggestion of Death, was released in 1999 in the U.K., and February 2000 in the US, with various translations published in 2000 and 2001.
Chilling Effect, the third novel in the series, was published in September 2004 by the University Press of Colorado. All three novels feature protagonist Lucinda Hayes, who practices law in Boulder, Colorado.
You may have seen or heard Mimi on National Public Radio, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, or Court TV, with her observations and analysis of the trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Lynn Nichols, the Columbine shootings, the JonBenet Ramsey case, and other legal matters. She provides regular commentary to NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday.
As a scholar, Mimi is best known for her contributions to the debate about pornography in feminism and law; her work on the subject has been published in law reviews as well as in more popular publications such as The Women’s Review of Books. Pornography and its relationship to free speech and to our troubled culture is the subject of her newest book, Chilling Effect. She has published many academic articles over the years, as well as a treatise about the Colorado Criminal Code called Crimes and Defenses in Colorado (which she believes nobody has ever actually read from cover to cover). Her principal teaching interests are criminal law, evidence, trial practice, and law and literature. Mimi's teaching has been honored with the Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Colorado three times; she has also been named a President's Teaching Scholar, the University's highest form of recognition for teaching excellence. She holds the Wolf-Nichol Fellowship at the Law School, a position set aside to honor teaching achievement. She also served as Interim Dean of the Law School in 1995-96, an experience that persuaded her once and for all that academic administration is not her calling.
Mimi is an experienced trial lawyer as well. In 1980, after four years of teaching, she took a leave of absence to serve for two years as a federal prosecutor in the Office of the United States Attorney in Denver. During those years she tried many federal criminal cases, including kidnapping, firearms and explosives cases, extortion, and white collar crimes. After she returned to teaching in 1982, she continued to take on occasional trial work to keep her skills from growing rusty and because nothing else has the thrill of the courtroom. In the mid-1980s she co-represented the plaintiff in Simmons v. Simmons, the first case in Colorado (and one of the first in the country) to recognize that a woman has a right to sue her former husband for abusive injuries he inflicted on her during their marriage. In 1991, Mimi was appointed by the California Supreme Court to represent a death row inmate, Jerry Grant Frye. His case is now in federal habeas corpus proceedings.
The experience of representing Jerry inspired Mimi to write her first novel, Render Up the Body, about a former prosecutor and rape victims' advocate who is appointed to represent a death row inmate. Render Up the Body is dedicated to Jerry Frye. It was published by HarperCollins in North America, Headline Press in the U.K., Goldmann Publishers in Germany, Editions Stock in France, and for other translations into Norweigan, Dutch, Portuguese, Hebrew, and Latvian. It appeared in the U.S. in January of 1998, where it was also a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and a finalist for the Colorado Book Award for fiction.
Her second novel, A Suggestion of Death, was released in 1999 in the U.K., and February 2000 in the US, with various translations published in 2000 and 2001.
Chilling Effect, the third novel in the series, was published in September 2004 by the University Press of Colorado. All three novels feature protagonist Lucinda Hayes, who practices law in Boulder, Colorado.
You may have seen or heard Mimi on National Public Radio, NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, CNN, or Court TV, with her observations and analysis of the trials of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Lynn Nichols, the Columbine shootings, the JonBenet Ramsey case, and other legal matters. She provides regular commentary to NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 25, 2010
RATING: 3.75
In her legal practice in Boulder, Colorado, Lucinda Hayes and her partner, Tory Meadows, have faced any number of disturbing cases, but none more so than the one that is presented to them via a gruesome fax of a murdered child. The young girl was murdered by Leonard Fitzgerald, who has been found criminally insane. His motivation for the murder was the repeated viewing of a child-porn snuff film called Sunshade Snuffdown. He lived across from a school, and in his twisted way thought that Alison Grayling was the child actress in the film and wanted to reenact it for him. The child's mother, Peggy Grayling, wants to sue the film's producers and have them take responsibility for creating a product that led to murder. At first, Cinda doesn't recognize Peggy, but it turns out that she is the older sister of one of her close childhood friends from Dallas. Peggy has become a very meditative and calm person who is very unruffled by events.
The first thing that Cinda has to do is watch the film, which she does with her lover, attorney Sam Holt. The film has a profound impact on anyone who views it. Cinda is completely disgusted at her own reaction, in that she found herself aroused by portions of it but then horrified by what happened to the child. Thankfully, Wesson is very tactful throughout the book in how the film is presented to the reader. The majority of the early part of the book deals with investigating the porn industry and tracking down the actors and producers of the film.
The latter part of the book presents the court case which is very interesting. One might expect that Cinda would be prosecuting based on censorship and First Amendment rights. However, she takes a different approach, sensing that she would be unsuccessful otherwise, seeking compensation for loss. She must prove that viewing the movie caused the murder and that the producers should have foreseen that result. At the same time, she cannot argue for restrictions on freedom of speech that would impact creative expression.
CHILLING EFFECT is the third in the Lucinda Hayes series. I found it an interesting book, but a bit heavy-handed when it came down to the actual legal opinions and arguments. There's a tremendous surprise in store in the final pages. Despite the grim subject matter, the book is suspenseful and thought provoking.
In her legal practice in Boulder, Colorado, Lucinda Hayes and her partner, Tory Meadows, have faced any number of disturbing cases, but none more so than the one that is presented to them via a gruesome fax of a murdered child. The young girl was murdered by Leonard Fitzgerald, who has been found criminally insane. His motivation for the murder was the repeated viewing of a child-porn snuff film called Sunshade Snuffdown. He lived across from a school, and in his twisted way thought that Alison Grayling was the child actress in the film and wanted to reenact it for him. The child's mother, Peggy Grayling, wants to sue the film's producers and have them take responsibility for creating a product that led to murder. At first, Cinda doesn't recognize Peggy, but it turns out that she is the older sister of one of her close childhood friends from Dallas. Peggy has become a very meditative and calm person who is very unruffled by events.
The first thing that Cinda has to do is watch the film, which she does with her lover, attorney Sam Holt. The film has a profound impact on anyone who views it. Cinda is completely disgusted at her own reaction, in that she found herself aroused by portions of it but then horrified by what happened to the child. Thankfully, Wesson is very tactful throughout the book in how the film is presented to the reader. The majority of the early part of the book deals with investigating the porn industry and tracking down the actors and producers of the film.
The latter part of the book presents the court case which is very interesting. One might expect that Cinda would be prosecuting based on censorship and First Amendment rights. However, she takes a different approach, sensing that she would be unsuccessful otherwise, seeking compensation for loss. She must prove that viewing the movie caused the murder and that the producers should have foreseen that result. At the same time, she cannot argue for restrictions on freedom of speech that would impact creative expression.
CHILLING EFFECT is the third in the Lucinda Hayes series. I found it an interesting book, but a bit heavy-handed when it came down to the actual legal opinions and arguments. There's a tremendous surprise in store in the final pages. Despite the grim subject matter, the book is suspenseful and thought provoking.
October 7, 2008
Same character as the other two Wesson books and same location (Boulder) which I continued to love to experience super-familiarity as I read. Every time she talked about the cross-walk between the parking lot and the Boulder courthouse I could vividly picture it. Almost every Boulder scene was familiar to me.
The topic of this legal mystery was the impact of pornography and the first amendment which is of great interest to me with my women studies and journalism background. I like the idea that the first amendment does not protect you from the consequences of your speech. Speech is specifically protected because it is a powerful tool, but if we know that our speech (or like product) can result in a wrong being committed, we need to accept the responsibility for that. In this case, the responsibility was financial, mostly, which for some is not too great of a burden to bear. And I believe, I would not feel any better about the loss of my child even if the perpetrator was in jail and/or I received millions of dollars in exchange. In other words, it wouldn't be a motivator for me to do what this character did. I was able to predict the gist of what was going to happen for the twist at the end. And, either I got smarter since reading the others in this series, or it wasn't as technically challenging for me. Great brain candy, though. Read the whole series just for fun.
The topic of this legal mystery was the impact of pornography and the first amendment which is of great interest to me with my women studies and journalism background. I like the idea that the first amendment does not protect you from the consequences of your speech. Speech is specifically protected because it is a powerful tool, but if we know that our speech (or like product) can result in a wrong being committed, we need to accept the responsibility for that. In this case, the responsibility was financial, mostly, which for some is not too great of a burden to bear. And I believe, I would not feel any better about the loss of my child even if the perpetrator was in jail and/or I received millions of dollars in exchange. In other words, it wouldn't be a motivator for me to do what this character did. I was able to predict the gist of what was going to happen for the twist at the end. And, either I got smarter since reading the others in this series, or it wasn't as technically challenging for me. Great brain candy, though. Read the whole series just for fun.
March 1, 2010
this is the 3rd book with lawyer Lucinda Haayes as main character, copywrited in 2004 and unfortunately, it seems to be the last from what I can determine. Too bad. These books do have very detailed trial descriptions that might be hard for some to get through but since I care so much for Cinda, I really want to know how she manages to get her information and convince the jury. This one deals with the effect of pornographic films on the behavior of a murderer. Not a familiar area at all for most of us but I liked the manner in which the author approached and dealt with the subject.
December 28, 2008
It's always fun to read a book that is set in a place you are familiar with. Wesson pokes fun at Boulder and that is worth a giggle or two. However, the larger issue of First Amendment rights is dealt with in the midst of a grisly crime and Wesson examines the pros and cons quite well.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews