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Contact: Nichole Johnson
Assistant director of media relations
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Longtime D.C. Lawyer Turned Crime Novelist to Discuss New Book at Capital University Friday
COLUMBUS, Ohio, Wednesday, Feb. 13, 2008 – Patrick Hyde, a veteran Washington, D.C., criminal lawyer, will read from his premiere novel “The Only Pure Thing” and answer questions about writing crime fiction at 1:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 15, 2008.
The reading will be held in Kerns Religious Life Center, located on Capital’s Bexley campus, 1 College and Main. It is free and open to the public.
In “The Only Pure Thing,” Hyde writes with obvious insider knowledge and command of the justice system in the nation’s capital gleaned from his career, during which he served as counsel in more than 1,300 cases and 100 trials.
Hyde jump-started his career in 1982, just one year after becoming an American Bar Association member, when he participated in a massive federal lawsuit against a Las Vegas pension fund and Morris Shenker, the man Life magazine called “the foremost lawyer for the mob in the U.S.”
In 1988, Hyde left government and served as counsel in hundreds of cases during the next 12 years. He has served as president of the D.C. Superior Court Trial Lawyers Association, and as a member of the D.C. Sentencing Commission. In 2001, Hyde returned to government and now serves as a division chief in the U.S. Department of Labor.
He graduated magna cum laude from Brown University and received his Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Hyde has contributed to a wide range of publications, including Washington City Paper, The Defender, Capitol Crimes, Marquette Law Review and CLIO: A Journal of History. Active in Mystery Writers of America, Hyde has served on the executive board of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter since 2004 and in 2006, was elected vice-president. Hyde is also a mister member of Sisters in Crime.
The Only Pure Thing (The Beckham Publications Group, synopsis provided by PJ Nunn)
Murder, says defense attorney Stuart Clay, is a lot like real estate – all about location, location, location. When police find the severed head of Benny Batiste on a Georgetown parking meter, Clay is called upon to represent Cleveland Barnes, a homeless man found near the scene of the crime wearing Batiste’s bloodied loafers. In his quest to defend Barnes, Clay must launch an all-out investigation that takes him from DC’s high-end communities to its seedy underbelly teeming with danger, violence and evil.
What follows is a tour of the D.C. criminal justice system as Clay races to connect the dots between a band of homeless revolutionaries, aging New York mobsters, and DC real estate development. Time is running out and Clay is getting closer, but will his search bring him closer to the truth, or closer to his own demise?
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