The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“Although the government’s pursuit of Scruggs smacked of entrapment to his supporters, that defense could not be used because he had not dealt directly with a federal agent or an informant when he covered Balducci’s original payments with a $40,000 check. Instead, the defendants from the Scruggs Law Firm settled on a defense built around the argument that the government had created the crime for which they were being falsely accused.”

“In a lengthy motion filed with the court on February 11, Keker asked for dismissal of the indictments on the grounds of ‘outrageous government conduct.’ The document not only accused the federal government of turning Judge Lackey into an agent involved in ‘manufacturing a crime,’ it charged that the government had ‘engaged in a pattern of concealing from this court’ exculpatory evidence helpful to the defendants.” (283)

Zeus is available now.

We hope to see you today at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie. If you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com or just give us a call: 601/800.366.7619.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“Scruggs was approaching his sixtieth birthday, and he entertained the thought, as many aging men do, of moving on to something new. One grand possibility seemed within his reach: to become an American ambassador . . .”

“His desire to become an ambassador grew as strong as his earlier yearnings to make the big lick. South America became the heart of his ambassadorial affections: he even settled on Ecuador as his next home. Surely, he figured, Trent Lott could deliver that for him. After all, Lott had arranged for Tom Anderson to serve as the ambassador in the Caribbean during the Reagan years. . .” (99-100)

“Scruggs began taking Spanish lessons. Confidently, he purchased a sixteen-seat Gulfstream, a luxury jet with the capacity to fly from the Gulf Coast to Quito without refueling. He even chose the figures to be painted on its tail: DS 368, The numbers referred to the $368 billion the tobacco industry had to put up to settle their case. The DS, he said, did not stand for Dickie Scruggs, but for “dollar signs.”

“At the beginning of the Christmas season in 2002, Lott attended a one-hundredth birthday party for Senator Strom Thurmond of Southern Carolina. Before abandoning the Democratic Party and becoming a talisman for the ‘Southern Strategy’ that lured segregationists into the Republican Party, Thurmond had been the presidential candidate for the racist States’ Rights Democratic Party, known as the Dixiecrats, in 1948. Mississippi was one of the four deep states to give Thurmond its electoral votes. In the flush of the moment, more than a half-century later, Lott toasted his ancient colleague and remarked, ‘I want to say this about my state. When Strom Thurmond ran for president we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years.'”

“In the ensuing storm of criticism, Lott gave up his position as majority leader within two weeks, and Scruggs’s dreams of becoming an ambassador died.” (100)

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“[Ed] Peters was seventy. His hair, which had grown gray years before, had now gone white and wispy. He was growing deaf and suffering from a cold . . . Though known as the chief fixer of Hinds County, he did not appear very menacing. He merely looked old and harmless . . .”

“[Steve] Patterson appealed to his old friend [Ed Peters] to help him in the case involving the bribe to Judge Lackey. Peters said he would like to help. After forty-five minutes of rambling conversation, [Joey] Langston and Patterson rose to leave.”

“Peters looked at his guests. ‘Boys,’ he said, ‘I’d cut my own throat for you.’ Then he made a slashing gesture across his neck with his hand.”

“Instead of protecting his old friends, Peters and his attorney, Cynthia Stewart, began meeting with federal authorities in Oxford . . . He was prepared to make a ‘Rule 11 proffer,’ in which he would tell all that he knew of the maneuvering with Judge DeLaughter in exchange for an agreement not to bring charges against him.” (265)

Zeus goes on sale today.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“In the fall of 1995, Scruggs called upon his best contact in the nation’s capital, his brother-in-law, the second ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate. He told Senator Lott of a possible breakthrough against tobacco . . .” (60)

“The tobacco issue did not thrill Lott. As a deeply conservative, pro-business lawyer, he was philosophically opposed to the profession of trial lawyers and the idea of mass torts. Over the years, he had become friends with many of the chieftains in the tobacco industry. But like his brother-in-law, Lott enjoyed swimming in political back channels and consummating deals behind closed doors. There could be something in it for him. A business connection. A political IOU. The satisfaction of brokering an important agreement.”

“The process would introduce Scruggs to the Washington branch of the Mississippi network he thought of as ‘the dark side of the Force,’ a consortium of political interests led by Lott and his principal factotum in Washington, Tom Anderson.” (61)

Zeus goes on sale Tuesday, October 19th.

We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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The reviews of Wilkie’s Zeus are starting to appear in our local publications. Adam Lynch of the Jackson Free Press makes comparisons between Zeus and Lange/Dawson’s Kings of Tort published in 2009. Read Lynch’s review here. Bill Minor also wrote a review on Zeus in The Clarion Ledger. Read it here. Read more reviews for Kings of Tort here.

Read Both Books & Form Your Own Opinion

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Curtis Wilkie reveals the face of the elusive P. L. Blake

The Fall of the House of Zeus by Curtis Wilkie (Crown, October 19, 2010)

“In late May 1994, the case to recover damages from Big Tobacco for Mississippi was filed in chancery court in Pascagoula, the home of Moore and Scruggs.” (page 58)

“For Mississippi, Moore would serve as the public official representing the state’s interests, while Scruggs would emerge as the principle voice for the plaintiffs. They worked in tandem, backed by the investments of others in the group . . . They called themselves the ‘Health Advocates Litigation Team’–HALT for short.” (page 58)

“Scruggs’s practice of making lone decisions for the partnership annoyed some of his associates. His freewheeling style and his propensity to make secret side payments to people such as P. L. Blake also ate into his own resources.” (page 59)

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We hope to see you at the signing/reading event with Curtis Wilkie on Thursday, October 21st, but if you cannot attend, you can reserve a signed copy online.

Click here to open an account on our website and we can save your information for future visits to LemuriaBooks.com.

You can also call the bookstore at 601/800.366.7619 and we can put your name on our reserve list.

Read other excerpts from The Fall of the House of Zeus.

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