It's 2002, and Joe Watson, who came straight out of Harvard Law to a job doing online research at one of St. Louis's top law firms, has never spent a day in court. Now he's been appointed to defend a sleazeball accused of killing a deaf African American, which violates not one but two tough new Federal hate-crime statutes. At their first prison meeting, this Client from Hell not only demands an extra blanket and two-ply toilet paper, but also that Watson get him permission to have a racist tattoo removed before it gets him killed. "There are a lot of Afro-Americans of color in here," he tells Watson. "I don't mean anything by that. Some of my best friends are friends of people who have talked to friends of Afro-Americans. You maybe saw on the news where a lot of men of colored end up in here because they are discriminated against or whatever..." Richard Dooling's combination legal/medical thriller and deadly satire of political correctness is a pure delight, as Watson has to juggle everything from a sexy scientist doing brain research who seems bent on destroying his marriage to a growing conviction that maybe the murder victim died just because he was a bad guy. Other examples of Dooling's artfully hilarious fiction available in paperback are Critical Care and White Man's Grave. --Dick Adler