 Here is Tulip today with my show, Hourglass Trails. Hope you are all doing well, dear viewers. And today it's a rainy day outside when we are recording. And we are going to talk about reading an incredible good mystery book. And that book is called Dark Road to Death. And guess what? I have the author with me today is James H. Barnhill for you. Let me introduce you to him. Thank you, James, for joining my show today. Well, thank you very much. It's so exciting to have the book and the author with me. Well, thank you very much. Please feel free to call me Jim. OK, thank you, Jim. That's good to know. Now, let's straight away go into a book. How did you start thinking about writing that book? Well, that's an interesting question. I think I had a relative that was a children's writer. And I think it was sort of in the air. And there was an incident in my office that got me thinking, you know, this would make a really good book. And that incident was a state fight. It was a bunch of people. And when the man died, a bunch of people got trying to get more money from each other. And there was dispute about who got what. And involved in that was our client, who was the son of the secretary. We weren't getting very far. And I thought, oh, my goodness. Oh, I have got it. You got to ask the question, why would a man give money to his secretary's son? So I went into the partner and said, I have got this. And this will win the case. And he said, we're not using it. So I said, fine, I'll write a book. So I did. That's incredible. That listening to you, I can hear the lawyer speaking. So I have like, you have so many accomplishments or experiences in life. Lawyer, entrepreneur, teacher, and an author. So you practice law, right? I did for a long time. So is that somehow like made into your mystery writing? I mean, as you were just saying, your experience at the workplace encouraged you to come up with the book. Well, there was things about, yeah. I mean, I wanted to write what I knew about, because that's what they always tell you to do. And there were some things about the legal system that I don't think are standard or ordinary. But sometimes there is the misuse of the legal system. I wanted to write a book that would show that to people in the hope that it could be reduced. By that, I mean, if very wealthy people can use the power of their money to turn the legal system from a system of justice into an instrument of oppression. And that's clearly wrong. I wanted to do what I could about it. That's amazing. I mean, you have brought your field of expertise into words of art, wrote the book. But I was also wondering, I mean, when a writer writes a book, one of the great problems that we face is the publisher. So how did you find the publisher? With great difficulty. It is amazingly difficult for you need an agent. And agents, I'm told, get 200 unsolicited letters a day. So you send out all these letters, and they may not even read them, asking if they would represent your book. Fortunately, there is a publisher in the Pioneer Valley called Levelers Press. You have to persuade them to publish your book. But if they do it, they're local, and they publish your book, and they're great service to the Pioneer Valley. I'm very grateful to Levelers Press for accepting my book for publication and doing such a fantastic job. Yes, definitely. As a local of Amherst, I do hear a lot about the great work they do. Now, tell me about the characters that you have chosen. But I was so glad. Sometimes books have too many characters, and it's difficult to follow them through the story who is doing what. But I was glad that they want too many characters. You have chosen the main role players. One thing, though, I was wondering about the name Torch. That really struck me. Like, it's an unusual name. Is there any reason? Yes, I made it up out of a whole class. But Torch was a redheaded, which is important to the book, actually, but I am not going to tell you why. And he was a basketball player. So there's a scene in the book in which he makes the last shot of the game. The buzzer sounds. It swooshes in, and they win the championship. And everybody goes nuts. The local paper starts nicknaying him and him Torch for his red hair. Oh, that's it. Now I get it. Now, I see that the books is a Sean Donovan mystery. So I was also wondering, what are you going to do? Is this a series of mystery books, or are you planning to write more on this? Well, when I published that book, Randy Zaco, at Levelers Press, started telling me I needed to write a sequel. And so I said, well, I'd like to see how this one does first. Well, so he put a Sean Donovan mystery on the front, because he wanted a Sean Donovan too. But what does the Sean Donovan name imply? Forgive me if I am being ignorant. Well, Sean, part of the book is set in Ireland. And Sean is obviously an Irish name, but it's the American version. It's not S-E-A-N. I thought about that a lot. It says H-A-W-N. And O'Donovan, I actually looked that up in a book to get an appropriate name. And it's a very grand Irish name. They came from very grand people in Ireland. And I wanted him because he was the protragonist to come from a long line of strong Irish people. Well, that's it. So you created this character too, the Sean Donovan. This is also your own creation. Yeah, I was wondering, because sometimes writers continue to write sequels to others already that are in the reading places. So I was wondering about that. Now tell me about the Ireland setting. I mean, you live in America, right? You live in America. Yeah, I live in America. Your first book is set in Ireland. Is there a special reason? Well, I had some business interests in Ireland at one point. And so I made many trips to Ireland. And I just fell in love with the country. I think it's an absolutely beautiful, great country with a little bit of really nice people. And I felt like that since I'd been there a lot, I could write credibly about the area. So I thought it's more interesting to have some scenes in Ireland. I think I'll stick in some Ireland. Oh, yes, but I also noticed that in your book, Ireland is the setting in Ireland. But the characters and the setting of the place is not so much there. I mean, if you go to visit a place, you'll notice lots of things are under surroundings. So I get you kept that a little bit marginal because you wanted to focus more on what's going on in the book. Because whenever I read about Ireland, it's lots about the beautiful place and the cliffs and the seas. So you plot the thrill of your mystery story, kept those a little bit aside, would that be it? I would agree with that. And the other thing that I did that might be germane here is that I took Grisham book and I did a tension chart, actually. I would read it and say, well, this is a tense scene, so I'd give that a five and this is not so much. This is a four and so forth. And then I charted how it ebbed and flowed throughout the Grisham book and then I used that as a guideline for how much tension I wanted at what place in the book. At that point in the book, I wanted to relax the tension a little bit so I thought a good way to do it was to put in some scenes from Ireland. That's amazing. Now I have to thank you for taking me through a mystery book after a long time because for my reading, I remember starting with Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, then Agatha Christie, Sidney Sheldon and Grisham. I mean, I was really into those and for a long time I haven't been reading any mystery stories. In fact, when I was reading, I was thinking of specially Grisham and Sidney Sheldon and Agatha Christie too because somebody dies in her books. So it was, I really, really thought of all this coming into one place in your book but in a very comprehensible way. I mean, it's not extreme in any way. Of course, death is extreme, it's very sad but bad things happen in the world and we have to be realistic and that's where you went and put your words. But anything else about the readings you have done to help you with your first mystery book? Well, this is a list. I hope I don't get boring but I read every Dick Francis, which I think influenced me greatly, that book, every Agatha Christie, every Perry Mason, every Hardy Boys. I actually used to go down to the department store and stand in line when they came out with the new Hardy Boys when I was a kid. So I've read a lot of murder mysteries and I think that would, and the Grisham's of course. That informed my writing of the book and probably why I wanted to write a mystery. Viewers, so are you thinking of what you are reading or are you going to read mystery? We often remember things when we are listening, right? I picked up mystery from Jim and we often bookworms and even if you don't read much, when you're talking about books, you want to read something, dig into old bookshelves and go to the library, right? So let's listen more to Jim and what he has to say. Now Perry Mason and the great mystery solvers that we have, but you have chosen a lawyer who is just into first solving of the first crime. Why? I mean, I often, I wondered why that? I mean, wouldn't be easier if you took an expert and you could put more thrill into your story and let him solve the case with more expertise because you had to explain lots of things in the book. As I read the, I mean, the not, you know, the nots of the law because you had to explain what your character is doing. So why was that choice? Can you just share that with us? Yes, it was actually required by the book because in the book, I wanted to bring in a theme of social inequality because I am concerned about the degree of social inequality in the country and I thought the best thing that I could do to protest that was to show how it played out in my book. So that ties in with what I said before about the use of money in the legal system to oppress people who don't have much money. Therefore, Torch was the protagonist who was most at risk, although his mother, Mary, wound up going to jail falsely. So he could not afford a lawyer. There's a scene in the book where he tries to hire one and gets kind of rushed out of the office when they find out he can't afford a $50,000 retainer. So he had to hire a lawyer who wouldn't charge him a lot of money. Oh, I see. So Torch had to be a neophyte. Otherwise he would have charged him more than Torch could have afforded to pay. I also love the human, the compassion, the sympathy you have shown between the lawyer and his person that he was solving the crime for. There's lots of love and mutual feelings of not being in the top place to have everything in your hand. That was really remarkable because as it says sometimes it's not, the life isn't about people who are powerful, who have a voice as it's about people who don't have a voice, who don't have power because that's where you have to put in energy, right? I really love that mutual sympathy between the two main characters in the story. I see, I thought of that. But I did make a conscious decision in my life long ago that I thought it was important to spend a significant amount of your time trying to help other people when they had less than you did or when they needed help. I just wanted to spend part of my life doing that. And that may be why that came out. I don't know, that was totally unconscious. I didn't do that. No, I really found it very sweet and thinking of the times, the contemporary times that we are sailing through, I mean, you have opened our eyes more than ever, like, reality is reality. We have to do what we have to do. So does the present unrest in the world, at home and abroad, sort of make you more, more thoughtful about starting more quicker about the next book that you are going to write, I hope, soon? Actually, I'm already generating a plot already. So yeah, I'm planning on writing another one in the initial stages of it or in progress. And I'd love to, maybe I can write this one a little faster than the other one. Definitely, I'm definitely looking forward to reading your next one. And for Levelers Press, I cannot really say how much I love their quality of the paper and the perfect size of the font. These days you go so tired of eyes being focused on screen and the books, whenever you want to read any paperbacks or something, I mean, first thing I, we think is like, how much of the eyes are going to gloat there? And it's the perfect size of the font, it's perfect, comfortable for the eyes. And thank you for that. Yeah, I'm gonna have to thank the Levelers, right? And you for the story. That was a big discussion actually, because the small, well, the interesting thing about it, I never thought about it for myself. The smaller the font, the fewer the pages. The fewer the pages, the cheaper the production costs. Exactly. The cheaper the production costs, the lower the price you can charge for the book. So it's a real decision about how big to make the font, it turns out, from a business perspective. That's like when you look at one book, you really have no idea how much is being put behind it, right? The business part of it and the creative part of it and the getting together of the whole art. Now, I would like to ask you, I mean, whenever we talk to writers, so what are the moods, don't you think? Dear viewers, whenever we write, there's a definite mood, or you call the muse that comes to you in that night or in the day or early morning. So if you are writers, if you're creative thinkers, how does it work for you? Let's listen to Jim. When do you write? Well, I wrote this book, I started it when I was practicing law and I was really busy, I got 50 phone calls a day. I counted them, I was so disgusted, but no phone calls no work. So I couldn't do it during the day and I was too tired at night. So what I decided to do is I got up an hour and a half earlier than I usually did and I'd write for an hour and a half, then I'd go off to my law practice. That's an excellent suggestion. So what are you able to do it every day or did you keep it fixed like two days a week or fixed routines? I did it every morning that I could. Sometimes if I were on a trial or something, I'd go to, I had a trial in Des Moines, Iowa that took a month, so I couldn't obviously write the book then, but every time I could, I don't really remember my schedule that much anymore. But the book is here, we have one book, but I would really like you to tell us a little bit about your experience as a lawyer, as a teacher, as an entrepreneur. I mean, this is like a sun, but the sunlight going to know more about the lights. Well, I start with teaching because I think teaching is just terrific. I really like working with young people and they keep me young. And I actually wound up with students that I still keep up with after 15 years. So I think that's just terrific and the teaching part is different from the law part because you have to work with a person's mind and emotions. If you're, say, coaching a mock trial team or something like that, that's a very total person activities. So that part I really love. The law part is really interesting to me because it is a lot of conceptual analysis. You have to know what you're doing to be good and it's very, very challenging. Going into the courtroom is quite challenging and sometimes nerve-wracking and sometimes you don't do what you wish you'd done. And so it's stressful. It's very stressful. It's a hard job being a lawyer. So can you tell us where were you teaching and what, see, was that law that you were teaching? I taught, yes, I taught, I taught in two high schools. I was a mock trial coach. I taught in two law schools, two colleges, and I was a mock trial coach at Emmer's College for a few years. Wow. And what about the entrepreneur part? Can you add something about that? Well, that was really funny because I killed a deal one time and I thought, oh my gosh, there was a salesman there that lost his commission and that was a third of his annual compensation, but I killed it because I found out the taxes weren't gonna work. And so my client, who was the investor, was not going to get back what he was told he might get back and I thought the guy would hate me forever. However, two months later, he showed up and said, we're forming a company and we want you involved. And I said, I thought you'd hate me forever. He said, well, you kept us out of jail once. I want you to keep us out of jail again. And so that's, it was called Beta-Therm Corporation and we got started with Beta-Therm Corporation and it started a subsidiary in Ireland, hence my acquaintance with Ireland. And it was fun, challenging, exciting. It was a great experience. But I really have lots of respect for the various fields of life you have experienced. Would you like to tell people, our dear viewers, some words about like, how really to take it all in the way you have, I mean, not to freak out, lifestyle agents up there, just a few words. How I take that in? Yeah, I mean, how you sometimes when there's, we need to take a new path to life with a shy away, we don't dare. So what would you say? Like to dare, to dream and dare. Oh, I see what you mean. Yes. I mean, it's all learning. I'm learning a lot from you. Oh, thank you. Well, I have a motto, my wife loves it. And the motto is, if you don't ask, the answer is always no. If you do ask, sometimes the answer is no and sometimes the answer is yes. So if you don't attempt to do what you love, you will never love what you do. So sometimes it's worth taking the risk of failure because of the joy of success. Yes, you know, it's incredible because each and every one of us finds life in a different way. We have our own life lessons, right, Jim? Absolutely. My life has been rocky sometimes, but not rocky sometimes. And sharing is what makes learning greater because we all learn from the mistakes we make, actually. But would you agree, like, if you keep saying we are making mistakes, it sort of keeps us, you know, more down on our confidence. But if we stick it as a lesson. Do we have time for a little story? Sure. Okay, I'll tell you an analogy that I think is very important about what you just said. How does a guided missile work? A guided missile works by getting off course. It makes a mistake. And then the gyroscope or whatever the device is inside the guided missile, corrects the course. And maybe it overcorrects the course a little bit and then it has to correct that and it's constantly correcting itself as it flies until it lands within three or four feet of its target. I see. So life is about making mistakes and learning from them and getting up and going on. Thank you. It's great. I mean, there is so much to learn in life, right? So I suppose day and night, yes and no, mistakes and corrections, lessons, everything makes the whole life together. Thank you for sharing that. And I really love your wife's lesson of yes and no. We have to be asking. In that sense, like small children and adults when we go into our later years is the same way a little bit. We have to ask. We have to know in order to find life. Did you say that? And we really, I'm really looking forward to the next book that's coming from you. I hope I'll know. You won't forget me if I, when you hit the best seller's list or something. Well, that's a long way to know. Yeah, that's what you have taught me. Dare to dream. Yes. Dreams are good. Even if you don't make them. Yeah. And I definitely will not forget you and I'm so appreciative of what you're doing today. Oh, no, thank you. That's my privilege to know you. Well, I must say I'm getting to know you as a person a little better and you're an astounding woman. Oh, I'm flattered. Thank you very much. But I hope I like you and learning from you. I keep that in life to give to life from me. Not like giving back to life. Is that how to term it, right? Right. So I'm trying to do that. Thank you for joining my show and I really, really appreciate it. So, are you going to all publish with Levelers again? Well, I just love working with them. They're very, very good to work with. So I'd certainly, that's certainly the stink possibility. I have to get them to like the book. Yes, yes. And there is your reading coming soon. At Jones Library, I got that big notice. On the 29th of this month at seven o'clock in the Woodbury room. Yes. So thank you, Jim. Thank you so much for joining my show today and best, best, best of luck with the next book. And I really, really am looking forward to reading it. So thank you so much for having me. It's a real honor. Yeah, likewise. So dear viewers, I'm holding this book up for you. It looks great, doesn't it? Dark Road to Death by Sean Donovan Mystery by James H. Barnhill. And check on the Jones Library website on the 29th of November, we are going to have a reading. So we hope to hear from you more from the reading that you will be doing soon, I hope. And we'll be letting you know where the books is available more. Can you tell me a little bit, Jim, going back to you? Oh yes, thank you very much. You can buy them in person from Levelers. You can buy them from mail, from Levelers. You can buy them on Amazon. And it's available in a paperback and also an e-book. E-book also, oh, I didn't get to that. That's amazing. So e-book is from Amazon. Well, Levelers did it, but it's sold through Amazon. It's $10 and the book is $18.95, I think, plus shipping. That's thank you. That's amazing. We learn more. It's available in e-book too. So check your cover again and make sure you don't miss reading it. Winter is coming and great time to stay home warm and a good reading. Nothing like a good book, a cup of coffee or tea to wake you up in the morning. And, dear viewers, hope to meet you again. Thank you so much to Amazon Media and its great team for making this show. And thank you for being there with me throughout the show. I'm truly wishing you all the best till we meet again. Thank you for watching Our Glass Trees. This is Mike working. Yes. Thank you, Randy. I really appreciate it. Thank you all for coming out today. It's just great to see such a nice crowd. And I really appreciate you're spending your evening out here today. I hope you enjoy it. I will say something about Leveler's Press. It's really wonderful to have a legitimate independent press in the Pioneer Valley because it's so hard to get published today. Thoughts that you have to have an agent and the agents sometimes get 200 unsolicited inquiries a day. And so it's very hard to break through. So Leveler's Press performs an extremely valuable function for writers in the Pioneer Valley. And they also have a self-publishing imprint, I think, called On the Common. Off the Common. So it's a great resource for the Pioneer Valley. I promised you a book on, I mean, a talk on the misuse of wealth to distort law, to change it from a system of justice into an instrument of oppression. And while I was thinking, what am I gonna say? I was reminded of my first job in San Francisco. And you're speaking of wealthy people. This was the second largest firm in San Francisco. And I was, it turned out, I got a training job, which was I did nothing but sue people for a bank, the seventh largest bank in the world. And so I did a lot, I filed 112 lawsuits my first year against people to collect money. Every one of them was preceded by a demand letter. And the demand letter is the first salvo in the use of power against people to collect money. Now, you know, my firm was on 111 Sutter Street, part of the financial district, big tall building. We all wore vests. It was so stodgy that I was in Berkeley, so I knew what orgies were. But when I went to my firm, they thought an orgy was when you came to a party and took off your vest. So that's the background. So I wrote these Brobake, Flager, and Harrison demand letters. And they went something like this, I'll be brief. The under sign represents Dada Dada Bank in connection with your failure to reimburse said bank for your overdraft, fees, expenses, and balance. You have failed neglected and refused to pay said balance, blah, blah, blah. And therefore, if you do not pay within 10 days of the date of this letter, we shall take such further legal action as our client may direct, sign Jimmy. No, actually it was James that you partied on this one. All right, so what do you think the response rate was? How many people paid after they got that letter? Zero. Yes, they were totally ineffectible. You're cheating your lawyer. All right, totally ineffected. So what I thought is I need a better letter. Now it turns out when I was getting ready for this, I found the letter that I wrote. I actually wrote a better letter. And then this is for real, I actually find that letter. And what I did with that is I was representing the loan adjustment department, i.e. collections, and the people there were a very small number, even though it was a huge bank. And I knew them all, I was on the phone with them every day, that's what I did. I got on the phone and talked to these people. So I thought it was okay to send them the letter. Here is the letter. It's a letter from the bank to the customer demanding payment. We're sorry to be the ones to say, you've overdrawn your account today. Your funds are gone. Your account is too. Does the word deposit ring a bell for you? This letter is not made to inform or harass. But to get to the point, you're a pain in the ass. It's clear that your balance bothers you not one bit. Cause you keep writing checks that aren't worth a shit. My name is Max. I send you facts. You send me checks, C-H-E-X, or I break your necks in the eggs. So that is what I learned about how to collect money. That's not the way. All right, international entrepreneur Pat Collin, he was flying high as the wealthy owner of Universal Electronics until team lovers found his body submerged in his Jaguar crew in a lake at the end of the dirt road to death. The medical examiner said suicide, but when attorney investigator Sean Donovan finally unearthed the receipt for dry ice, he said murder. Meanwhile, Sean's impoverished client, Torch Walsh, quit his dead end job to manage a company that Pat left him. Pat's unscrupulous successors at Universal Electronics then tried to steal Torch's company using a bogus lawsuit perjury, false arrest of Torch's mother, assault, extortion, and murder. Pat, I mean, Sean O'Donovan threatened with dirty tricks, blackmail, and violence at every turn faced overwhelming odds to protect Torch and his mother and to solve Pat's murder. Not to give anything away, but there's a judge in this book who seems to be on the take. Is that fiction or is that fact? Now that is, OK, you put me on the spot. But that's all right. There are two occasions in my life where I know for a fact that judges did stuff like that. But I have been practicing, this is my 50th year with a law license. And when I say I know two, I know two. Too, too many. So there was a lawsuit. What about? Well, it's about Joe McDougals being greedy and dishonest. He took over Universal Electronics, which was a big, big company, international company with plants in Ireland and the United States. But that wasn't enough for him. He wanted the side business that Pat Cullen, he left Torch Walsh, his secretary son. And so he started a lawsuit to steal the company. And he used a lot of dirty tricks that I've already alluded to to help him. And some that I haven't. So more importantly, what does that have to do with the misuse of wealth? Well, the reason that it does is because Joe McDougal is in this, it has this company with its vast resources, international resources. And he's suing the son of his predecessor, Secretary. She worked for Pat Cullen for a long time. But he didn't apparently pay her very well because she lived in the seedy apartment, was dilapidated in a bad section of town. And her son didn't have any money either. But he did get into Harvard. However, then she got sick. So she gets sick. And then she gets sicker. So Torch Walsh has to drop out of Harvard in order to help pay the medical bills. So you've got very wealthy people backed by a wealthy corporation suing these poor people with no money. But I won't tell you the other things. So Joe wanted plastic molding. But Torch wouldn't sell it. Right. What does that have to do with Joe's distorting of the law into an international expression of its powerless, destitute people? OK, yeah. So Joe McDougal, I'm going to have to read this because this is a section from the book. Joe McDougal brought his second in command, Steve Engstrom, into his office one day because he really wanted to get that company away from Torch. And he wanted Steve Engstrom to help him carry out his nefarious intentions. And here's what it says in the book to describe that. It shows motive. Pat left plastic molding to that kid Torch. Joe exhaled cigar smoke in Steve's direction. The room filled with a repumped stench. Steve tried to suppress the cough. So what? I think it has a patent that could be worth millions. Pat never did anything with it. But I think it's worth a lot of money. Some of our products are pushing the limits on it. I checked with a lawyer who said we might be violating the patent. I got a business broker of mine to try to buy it. But the kid said it was not for sale at any price. He gave some BS about Pat wanting him to have it. And it was his future and shit like that. Worse, that kid has been operating only six months. And I'm hearing through the grapevine that he's beginning to make serious money. He might get the capital to look into the patent and start hassling us. That kid is too damn smart for his own good. Besides, we need the parts that plastic moldings make. And I don't want to be under that kid's thumb. They wanted him to pay $3 million. He might as well have asked explicitly for his financial murder. Torch's hand shook as he put down the complaint. What would he do? Short, Torch fell panic in his throat. He started to sweat. He didn't want to see his business wreck and have to go back to managing a convenience store. His future destroyed. And his ability to take care of his mother ruined. Torch's stomach tightened violently. He rushed to the bathroom and threw up. Slazinger was a man in his early 40s. Equipped with a hurried manner, a booming laugh, and a commanding voice. He wore a regulation dark blue suit with a subtle pinstripe, a red power tie, and a blue shirt with a white collar. He sat at the head of a long conference table equipped with 20 leather seats. Torch looked appraisingly at Slazinger's rimless glasses and dominating expression. Slazinger's head held a cross pin just above a yellow legal pad. Torch and Laney thought that Slazinger looked very much as if he could kick butt in Torch's case. This suit is the most unfortunate Slazinger advice, especially in view of the newness of your position. You're most vulnerable to attack. First of all, if you do nothing, the court will enter a judgment against you by default. The law requires you to defend yourself or you lose automatically. Moreover, they might obtain a very large judgment against you personally, even though it is apparent you have done nothing wrong. They would take over your company. In other words, Slazinger explained further, you would be dumped out on this street. Torch said, so that's easy, we'll fight. Slazinger looked out the large window. He watched the sailboats gliding gracefully across the Boston Harbor for a moment. And then he carefully began to explain Torch's problems. Lye steel sheet didn't violate the canons of ethics, didn't misuse the power of the courts, didn't violate any court rules. He just demanded a lot of money because he was a high price firm. And in fact, that's a really good question because it talks about what's wrong today and why we have a problem. We have a problem today because it's so expensive to hire a lawyer, a lawyer for a complex case. And part of that reason is driven by the high cap cost of law schools. When I went to law school, it cost me $4,000 per year. That's it. I got a Harvard degree. But today, it's like $60,000 a year. And you can't get scholarships by and large, although I know one person who did it. But mostly, you can't. So you graduate with this humongous debt. So you want a big fat salary to pay that debt. And you can get it. You can go to a big firm if you graduate from a major law school with high grades, which is the kind of lawyer you're going to need for something like being sued by Universal Electronics. And you can get maybe $150,000 or $190,000 a year after bonuses. And this is your first year out. Now, think about how much money that firm has to bill every year in order to get back that money. And the other problem with it is that lawyers making that kind of money right out of school, they don't know much. And I didn't know. I had to learn. That's why they gave me that job suing people left and right. But I didn't get that kind of money. I got $13,500 a year from my first year out. Now, the problem is these people have so much money going into the salary pocket, because that's the competition level, that they can't work on little cases like I did. I didn't work on big cases. I worked on teeny little cases. They gave me a problem in the sorry, notesuits. That would have had to perpetually have to work like a banshee to lose. But you can't do that with that kind of salary going in. So you have the system, which is stratified now. It's driven into the firms with the top graduates from the top schools, with the top experience and the top firms with all kinds of health librarians, many associates, senior partners, junior partners, all kinds of equipment. The best library, the best research, everything like that. And they just do everything that they need to do no matter what it costs. And then you have other people who can't get that kind of firm. They can't afford it, so they have to go to a small lawyer, maybe a sole practitioner or something like that from somebody who maybe wasn't that from the top school. Maybe that person went to just a regular school and was a regular student and got regular grades and came out and does a regular job. And it's a mismatch. It's a big mismatch. I got that part of it, if there is a message to the book besides being a piece of entertainment, is the problems with the legal system jumping out of the book itself. Do you have some solutions? Well, I knew I was going to get the answer to that question. And it's really kind of rough. And I mean, how do you change the whole economics of the entire system and make it work more reasonably and at less cost? The federal courts have done some work in that area because they did create rules that require they call automatic disclosures. When you file a lawsuit, there's a list of stuff you just have to produce. And the other side did owe. And you better not produce it or the judge will get mad at you for change and actually enforce it. So that's a step in the right direction. Then the other thing that I think is in thinking about some of the cases I had that went off the rails, I think we need to get judges who think more economically minded because it's very hard, in my experience at least, to get a judge. You can't go into court and say, this is getting too expensive because it usually doesn't work. And I think we need to have an educational process with judges that would just focus attention on how expensive it's gotten and how justice crumbles and costs go up. Because the bankruptcy court system operates better than the criminal law? Actually, yes. As a matter of fact, I was a bankruptcy lawyer for a long time. I only did business work. And business bankruptcies can get pretty expensive, too. But in general, bankruptcy judges are thinking about, oh, this is a bankruptcy court. We don't want to spend a lot of money on overhead here. And the other thing about bankruptcy judges that I think is important to me, bankruptcy judges are appointed by a panel of blue ribbon panel headed by the Court of Appeals. And they have US District Court judges on it. And then they have very prominent bankruptcy lawyers on it. That group of people picks the bankruptcy judges. The result of that is bankruptcy judges know what they're doing. I've never met one that didn't. And I've been to bankruptcy court a lot. I was up there every day for a long time. So that helps a great deal when you have a judge who focuses on economics and who's highly skilled in the area of law that he hears. And you get the same one every time, too, which helps a lot. Because the other thing that is really good about bankruptcy courts is they know the lawyers. Because generally speaking, it's the same lawyers every day that they see. So if you irritate, if I could say, and the judge is better at irritating you than you are at irritating the judge. So this is cramping down a bit. Law firms will specialize more so that trusts and estates, which is a low income part of big urban law firms. In fact, a lot of big urban law firms are dropping T&E and focusing on mergers and acquisitions and other things like that. So that these large lawsuits, like the one described in your book, where a lot of money changes hands with a law firm, would not happen to the average person. Everybody needs a will. I'm sure everybody in this room has a will or needs one. But they don't have to go to hail and door to get their will written. Hail and door being one of these massive firms in Boston with oodles of money and billing your rates of probably $1,000 an hour and up. More. Yeah, I said, that's the up part. Some of their top people are charging two an hour. How many? Three? Two. Two, yeah. I heard 1,850, but I wasn't. Well, that's close enough. Yeah, I know. I want that exit. But you don't want. I got a mortgage. People need to get their wills rewritten periodically or for their children or whatever when the children are of age. And they shouldn't have to pay that kind of money to a law firm to get a will done. Well, strangely enough, I absolutely agree with you. The only thing I could say that helps is because we have such this huge exemption now for the federal and state tax, that very few people need a fancy will anymore. It used to be that the exemption was much lower. I think I'm not going to say I'm not a state's and trust lawyer, but it's many millions. And so if you don't have many millions, you don't need to worry about the tax impact, the estate taxes from the federal government, which in the olden days was quite substantial. So that means that a large number of people don't need the complexity of the federal of the wills and its trusts that you would get to try to minimize your federal and state taxes. You just die and you're all right. So none of this book was an outline. I didn't, I didn't try to, I mean, I had, I knew where I wanted to go. I had a charter of character names because I'm not very good at remembering names, including the ones I've made for myself. And I kind of knew the idea of how I wanted to do it, but I did not have, I did not make a outline, line by line. And I know that from reading books, I know that there are authors who just write and they don't even know where they're going to go. They just start writing. But I wanted a really tight plot and you can't get a tight plot that way. So I had to do a little bit more writing down where it's going to go and what's going to happen, but not in any detail. Hi, I'm with Jake at the reading and he's going to tell us about how he heard about Dutch Road to Death. Jim worked with the mock trial program at my school, which I'm a part of. And he was a board member for a while and so I knew him through that and I was able to hear about his book and I'm really glad that I did because I really enjoyed reading about it. And I've also gotten the opportunity to help him with a website and a Facebook page, which has been really awesome. So you have read his book, right? Yes. So what did you like best about it? I don't even know. I mean, I loved it all. I was really impressed by his writing, especially since it's the first book. It was one of the most exciting books. Like I've read total, which is crazy, especially for his first book. It was just, it was constantly really engaging and it was constantly really exciting and it was just an awesome read. Thank you, Jake. That's great to hear. So here we have Marty, who has read the book Dutch Road to Death and I'm here today at the Jones Library Room on the reading day of Jim. So let's hear for Marty what he has said about the book. Yes, well, I found out about the book because I was at a meeting with Jim and he told me he was writing this book and it was a mystery. I always enjoyed mysteries. So I was happy to be able to get a copy of the book and read it. I liked it for a lot of reasons. One was, it had a very intriguing plot that I enjoyed. Whenever I read a mystery book, I like a book that surprises me. I don't like to be able to figure everything out as I go along. I'd like to know, be able to make suspicions about whatever's gonna happen next. But then to get surprised. So that's something that happens in Jim's book. There are some surprises along the way that are delightful to read. Has excellent detail. He describes things without going overboard. So, you know, there isn't just too much detail and not too many characters. I don't like books where I have to make a list to keep track of all the people and characters in the book. So I think he has a nice balance of detail, of characters, that sort of thing. It just makes it an easy read, a fun read and a surprise ending is really wonderful. I won't tell you what that is, but I think you'll enjoy it.