Blauser's Building
Alan H. Neff
Cover Art by Giau Truong

THE BOOK

A comic, dark, and fast-moving David-and-Goliath story about lawyers in Chicago.

A decade ago, Milton Blauser was a successful lawyer, a tactical genius, but he suffered a complete breakdown. The wife and son of his former partner, Perry Stockbridge, died tragically then, and Blauser blames himself for their deaths.

Stockbridge is Goliath to Blauser's David. He was the strategic planner and rain-maker in his former partnership with Blauser.

After Blauser's breakdown, Stockbridge moved on to a large corporate law firm, where he oversees a profitable and rapacious stable of transnational clients. Meanwhile, Blauser's downward spiral has continued: he lives in a tenement and works as a busboy in a Greek restaurant.

To serve an unnamed client, Stockbridge schemes to take Blauser's building and get Blauser's law license revoked. Blauser resists; he's assisted—reluctantly—by a Chicago police detective named Rollo Feinberg, who is retiring imminently, graduating from night law school, and planning to sue the Chicago Police Department for never promoting him above detective. Ultimately, Blauser may save his building and his license, but he will have to pay a high personal price to prevail.

THE AUTHOR

Alan H. Neff is a senior litigation counsel for the City of Chicago, where he sues polluters and confidence artists who prey on the elderly. He received his undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Michigan, from which he also earned a master's degree in natural resource policy and management. He's the author of two non-fiction books (about the selection of federal judges and tax law) and numerous articles about the legal system or business communication. A Chicago native, he's married to Meade Palidofsky, a director/playwright. They have two sons. He is working on a new novel about Rollo Feinberg.

 

Photograph by Giau Truong

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