The Best Minds

The Best Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions by Jonathan Rosen  562 pp.

In 1973 the Rosen family moved into a house in New Rochelle, NY, across the street from the Laudor family. Young Jonathan Rosen and Michael Laudor soon were best friends and inseparable through high school and into college. Both young men were highly intelligent and ambitious. Michael completed college in three years as Summa Cum Laude. He soon went to work for a high power consulting firm. Before long Michael is hospitalized after a psychotic break and is diagnosed with schizophrenia. Johnathan does his best to be supportive while living in California earning Masters and Doctorate degrees. Michael spends time in a halfway house before using his deferred acceptance to Yale Law School. The administration and faculty are very supportive and accommodate Michael's difficulties which includes daily hallucinations of his room engulfed in flames and his parents being Nazi imposters. In spite of that he received his law degree. Soon he was in talks with Ron Howard's production company about making a film of Laudor's life. However, mental illness is unpredictable and things soon went sideways. Michael and his fiancée, Caroline Costello, shared an apartment until the day in 1998 when he brutally stabs her to death. He was captured that night after assaulting police officers It took six weeks before he realized she was dead after not understanding why she hadn't come to see him. Because of the vagaries of the legal system in such cases it took awhile before Michael was incarcerated in an institution in New York. He remains there and his illness is reevaluated for the possibility of release every two years . Much of this book is an examination of the treatment of the mentally ill by both the medical and professions. Because mental illness is so unpredictable it is impossible to find a black & white solution. In spite of his closeness to Laudor and his family, Rosen presents a balanced, informative, and compassionate story of a tragic situation.

Ron Howard never produced a film about Michael Laudor but made "A Beautiful Mind" about schizophrenic mathematician, John Nash a few years after the murder of Costello.

The Rooster Bar

The Rooster Bar by John Grisham, 352 pages

Mark, Todd, and Zola are third-year law students at Foggy Bottom Law School, a D.C.-based university with a reputation as dubious as its name. Faced with zero job prospects and nearly a quarter of a million dollars each in student loan debt — as well as months of studying for the bar exam that they probably won't pass — the trio decides to leave their diploma mill school and set up shop, hustling DUI, speeding, and simple assault cases down at the courthouse. So what if they don't have law degrees! Nobody ever asks the attorneys representing Joe Public-who-got-pulled-over-going-80-in-a-45 if they have a degree — everyone just assumes they do. Of course, this scheme only lasts for so long once the partners take a case that's way over their heads.

It's been a minute since I've read a John Grisham book (I'm pretty sure the year started with a 1 instead of a 2), and I'd forgotten how readable he makes all the legal stuff. I liked the three characters' motivations for starting their life of crime, though other than Zola (who almost got dragged into it by the others), I wasn't too keen on the characters themselves. A quick, fun read for anyone suffering under the weight of student loans.