A Patent Lie (Michael Seeley Mystery)

Product Description

A gripping inside look at high-stakes lawyering,
A Patent Lie is further evidence that Paul Goldstein is an emerging master of the legal thriller.After being forced from his high-powered Manhattan law firm, Michael Seeley—the tough-but-wounded hero of
Errors and Omissions—has set up shop in his native Buffalo. Partly out of need, partly out of pride, Seeley takes on a case for his estranged brother, whose small biotech firm is suing a Swiss pharmaceutical giant over a controversial new AIDS vaccine. Seeley heads out to Silicon Valley to lead the case, but soon realizes there is much more at stake than he was first led to believe. As certain partnerships come to light, and financial gains become staggeringly clear, Seeley’s own life may be in grave danger.

Review

“John Grisham made the contemporary legal thriller into a bestselling genre. Goldstein has transformed the genre into an art form.”—
Dallas Morning News “Fresh and original.” —Sue Grafton“A complex story, very well told, of a gray and shifting universe in which most things are not what they seem.” —
San Jose Mercury News“Smart, challenging. . . . Among the novel’s pleasures are [Goldstein’s] insights into lawyers and the games they play.” —
The Washington Post Book World“Timely and fascinating. . . . Gives readers interested in the drama of a high-value legal case a great reward for their attention.” —Alan Cheuse, NPR’s
All Things Considered

About the Author

Paul Goldstein is the Lillick Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and is widely recognized as one of the country’s leading authorities on intellectual property law. He is regularly included in
The Best Lawyers in America and testifies before congressional committees and international government meetings on intellectual property issues.
A Patent Lie is the sequel to his first novel,
Errors and Omissions. A New York native, he now lives outside San Francisco.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

ONE

The last time Michael Seeley saw his brother it was in a hotel kitchen in San Francisco and Leonard was arguing with the hotel’s catering manager over the bill for his wedding reception. Workers were cleaning up and the pulsing bass from the dance band in the next room echoed over the clatter of silverware. Seeley had to catch red-eye back to New York City, but the caterer was implacable and Leonard wouldn’t let up, even when Seeley signaled that he was going to leave. Only after Seeley started out the door did Leonard stop, flinging his arms open to pull him into an awkward embrace.

“Let’s stop being strangers, Mike.” Leonard’s breath tickled his ear.

Seeley broke away without answering. He loved his younger brother in the sense that he cared about his well-being, but he neither liked nor trusted him.

In the nine years since the wedding Leonard had called three or four times and sent his annual Christmas card. There was a printed announcement when he moved his medical practice from Palo Alto to San Francisco, and another last year when he took a job as chief medical officer at a biotech company in South San Francisco.

The announcement, mailed to Seeley in Manhattan, caught up with him in Buffalo, where he had moved his law practice. His first job out of law school had been in Buffalo. However, this time he was practicing not in the city’s largest firm but by himself, and not in a steel-and-glass office tower but in a small office in the Ellicott Square Building, an ancient pile of bricks in the center of the city’s half-deserted downtown.

Seeley’s feet were up on a corner of his desk. Behind him, the single window looked out onto Swan Street, four stories below. His large shoulders hunched forward as if he was trying to warm himself against the chill scene outside. Rudy, the building’s boiler man, was maneuvering a giant wrench beneath the decrepit steam radiator by the door and offering his views on whether the radiator was the oldest in western New York o