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Suffers greatly from the fact that Malcolm is not an attorney

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I love Janet Malcolm's writing. But I found this book frustrating and tedious, although it's barely 160 pages. There's nothing straightforward about her presentation of McGough's story, and Malcolm simply doesn't understand an attorney's ethical obligations. She doesn't present McGough's crime of fraud (and yes, I agree McGough was railroaded) in a straightforward manner so that the reader can make up her own mind. Then, on page 113, Malcolm suddenly decides to inform the reader that prior to the criminal offense in Virginia, McGough was sanctioned for another ethical violation in the DC courts. Uh...Janet...this is relevant information...it's even vital information. The fact that you, as a writer, think it's only a "lacuna" or "elision" for someone to forget to mention facts to a District Court Judge...to an attorney that's a major violation of ethics. Again, the book suffers from the fact that Malcom is not an attorney and approachs the book philosophically. In her other work, this is helpful, in this book, it's maddening.

A Frustrating Book

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There was a good book in here somewhere, but I found the author's point of view toward the main charachter frustrating. Either offer more analysis of her poor decisions or tell us some more facts to make the reader more sympathetic to the lawyer. But the way the author left it, I felt the lawyer seemed unsympathetic and some of her actions without enough explanaton/justification/analysis to give teh reader some perspective.

The story is somewhat interesting, which manages to carry the book, but the writing left me wanting more.

Misfire

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Like most of Janet Malcolm's books, "The Crime of Sheila McGough" is well-written enough to be interesting and certainly readable. Unlike her other books, which are often oddly persuasive although demonstrably wrong, or at least ill-fated ("The Journalist and the Murderer," "In the Freud Archives"), "Crime" never really manages to give a clear portrait of its central character, whom Malcolm claims to see as an "exquisite heroine," or the situation she found herself in. Sheila McGough was a defense lawyer for a con artist who wound up being indicted as a conspirator in his schemes, and while Malcolm insists her heroine was not romantically involved with her client nor a criminal, it is hard to disagree with the various attorneys interviewed in the book who characterize McGough as simply in over her head. While it seems unlikely McGough was "framed" or the target of a government conspiracy, as she and her family claim, she does seem to have been ground up in the court system mainly because she didn't really know what she was doing as a lawyer. Malcolm wants her point to be that McGough's dogged defense of her client is particularly unsuited to the legal system in America today, but her sweeping generalizations about the courts seem idiosyncratic and she faults lawyers for thinking of their profession as a career (one wonders what else she would have lawyers do). She keeps insisting her heroine is terrible but lovable, a sort of legal Madame Bovary who is noble in her doomed romantic illusions about the law, but the substance of the book seems as hard to pin down as the con artist McGough went to jail for protecting. Malcolm characterizes a trial as being a duel of narratives, but her own narrative convinces the reader of nothing except that Sheila McGough is indeed exasperating.

For better books by Malcom, read "The Silent Woman: Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath" or "Psychoanalysis: The Impossible Profession." For better books about court cases which do manage, in the writer's hands, to say something about the human condition, Calvin Trillin's "Killings" is highly recommended.

Thoroughly Biased Writing By a Fine Author

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Having been interviewed by Ms Malcomb for this book, given that I was personally responsible for the plight of her protagonist, I can say with certainty that she has really missed the truth of this matter. I have read and like a number of her other works, but this book simply ignores by omission the fact that Sheila McGough went to jail for very good reasons. There were many others who were defrauded by her, and it is no fluke or prejudice of our system--as Ms Malcomb avers--that she was found guilty.
For a fine author to have been hoodwinked by Ms McGough shows how good she really was at getting other people's money for her criminal boyfriend. This would only be qualified as bad journalism were it an article, although it may be well written. On this case, however, Ms Malcomb just got it wrong--and in a book which is suppposedly relating a true story this is unacceptable.

Another great work from Janet Malcolm

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This is the first full-length book by Janet Malcolm that I read, and it lead to my finishing almost all her books.

It is as engaging as, if not more than, other books by Malcolm. It reads like a profile of a defese lawyer who is idealistic to the degree of being obstinate. But at a deeper level, the book argues that the American legal system, which many automatically associate with such ideals as Justice, Fairness and Objectiveness, is more often a battle ground for competing narratives from the defense and prosecution. Malcolm seems to suggest that the winning of a case has less to do with facts than with weaving of those facts into convincing narratives. Being naively idealistic, Sheila McGough was so unsuccessful at being a likable human being (even Malcolm has difficulty liking her) that she tainted the credibility of her own case in the eye of the judge who just didn't find her commonsensical.

But was she guilty because she was a difficult human being/lawyer? This is the troubling question posed by the book. Depending from which angle one approaches the book, it's either a cautionary tale about the importance of being commonsensical or a successful attempt at deconstructing what we call seeking of truth as the goal of American justice system.