Mike Bowler

Dump Truck Mike Bowler

This short novel is the tale of middle-aged lawyer Bill Burke who, after a failed 27-year marriage and a successful 25-year civil law practice decides to chuck it all to become a public defender in Fresno, California. He finds himself attacked by judges, prosecutors, and his own clients who all want to push him around. He sees both the absurdity and reality of the American criminal justice system concerned so much with efficiency that it punishes only the poor and dispossessed. When he has to take a dancer's "buttock cleavage" case to trial, he begins to understand why Charles Dickens' character, Mr. Bumble, said, "The law is a ass."