By Tom Kirvan
Legal News
According to Christopher Hitchens, the late British author and journalist, “Everybody does have a book in them, but in most cases that is where it should stay.”
Detroit attorney Bob Forrest has done his best to disprove that caveat with the recent release of his first literary work, a novel entitled Detroit Deceit.
Detroit, of course, has been national fodder for much of the past six months as the city deals with a financial train wreck that seemingly claims more casualties each day. As a former federal prosecutor who now specializes in white-collar criminal defense work, Forrest may well capitalize on the sudden interest in “all things Detroit,” he acknowledges.
“The timing is a bit fortuitous, given that I’ve been writing this book off and on for the better part of four years,” Forrest says of the 241-page work of legal-based fiction.
And for those who have been engrossed in the real-life saga of “deceit” that ended the once promising political career of a former Detroit mayor, Forrest makes no mention of the web of corruption that engulfed the city for six years while Kwame Kilpatrick held office. Instead, Forrest built his book of Detroit Deceit on the foundation of two cases he was involved with over the course of his legal career.
“The book is a combination of two cases, one of which involved money laundering and conspiracy,” he explains. “That case had a bit of everything – sex, money, and organized religion. If it hadn’t been real, it would be hard to believe in some respects.”
The central figure in the book is Alex Drew, a “hard-working criminal defense attorney in Detroit, practicing in federal court,” according to the synopsis contained on the book cover. “After successfully defending the scion of a rich Detroit family in one federal case marred by prosecutorial misconduct, Drew is thrust into the defense of his client in a second complicated criminal tax and money laundering case involving a former secretary to a Catholic order and a Diocesan priest. Before he can do so, however, he must defend his childhood friend, now an ATF special agent who is caught in a web of racial and government politics.”
The plot, spiced as it is with investigative tales and accompanying courtroom drama, is designed to appeal to a lawyerly crowd, Forrest admits, although there are periodic references to the look of a “gritty” Detroit and its “multicultural melting pot.” Writes Forrest in the opening chapter, “What other city in America could claim as its own: Soupy Sales, Lily Tomlin, Gilda Radner, and Mork & Mindy on one hand, and The Purple Gang, Jimmy Hoffa and Steven Grant (suburban murderer and dismemberer of his wife) on the other?”
Forrest, a past president of the Federal Bar Association for the Eastern District of Michigan, held a book-signing party in October at The Rust Belt Market in Ferndale, a reception attended by more than 100 friends and colleagues. Another book-signing event took place in early December at the Lebanese American Heritage Club in Dearborn, less than a month after the national release of Detroit Deceit, according to Forrest.
A graduate of Northwestern University, Forrest earned his juris doctor from Georgetown University, where he was an editor of the law review his second and third years. Following graduation from Georgetown, Forrest served as a judicial clerk to federal Judge June Green, a member of the U.S. District Court bench for the District of Columbia. He then spent six years working for the U.S. Department of Justice before embarking on a career in
private practice specializing in tax litigation.
A former adjunct professor of taxation at the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, Forrest is a past board chair for the Academy of Sacred Heart in Bloomfield Hills, a school that once stood where the Renaissance Center towers above the Detroit River today. He and his wife, Deirdre, have three grown children, Caitlin, John, and Matthew. Forrest’s daughter, also a graduate of Northwestern, received kudos from her father for “careful editing” that “greatly improved this book.”
The finished product, which was published by Tate Publishing and Enterprises, was “no small task,” Forrest says, noting that it is available through Amazon.com.
“Although I wrote it in spurts, it was a lot of work, especially when you get to the proofing and rewriting stages,” he says. “I came away from all this with a deeper appreciation for those who write books for a living.”
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