Andy Siegel. Elton’s Case. New York: Rockwell P, 2018. Print. A Tug Wyler Mystery.

Here is another installment of a legal mystery starring medical malpractice specialist Tug Wyler. Elton’s Case is another fascinating read. It is a combination of a legal suspense novel, à la Grisham, with something of a mystery, as in the old Perry Mason stories. It is for most readers a lot of fun, with, I believe, some insight into the law itself.

Elton is a man who spent ten years in prison for a crime that he did not commit. He was exonerated, but by then he was wheelchair-bound, apparently (should I say allegedly?) because he was beaten and manhandled by some guards who did not like him while on a transfer between prisons.

Since this unfortunate event, he has spent ten years trying to get the City of New York to pay for his medical costs and otherwise pay for damages and pain. He is demanding six million dollars. The City of New York, on the other hand, claims he is faking it. Wyler notes, among other things, it is hard to fake a catheter to urinate and to pretend to have atrophied leg muscles.

There are a couple of things that make this case a little complicated. Elton’s case is referred to Wyler by a friend who is a criminal defense lawyer. Most of his clients are unsavory characters, and it almost seems to Wyler that Elton is a little too glib.

The city has a prison guard who can testify that she saw Elton stand up out of his wheelchair to beat up a man who had given him a hard time. (Before his run-in with the law, Elton had been a Special Forces soldier.) Elton, however, has a tape recording of the same corrections officer threatening him because he was involved in selling contraband in the jail that competed with her own underground operation.

Elton has also been accused of rape. His (alleged?) victim tells one story; Elton tells it a very different way. His victim is also a crackhead who may be living under an alias to avoid legal problems herself. And if Elton has the spinal injury he claims, he probably is physically incapable of rape.

And even though the city maintains that Elton has been faking his injury for ten years, they are willing to pay him millions of dollars to settle the case out of court. It seems odd that if they were so certain he was falsifying his injury, why they would actually end up willing to pay him more than his initial demand in order to avoid a hearing in a court.

Like Nelly’s Case, there is a subplot involving another client in a completely unrelated case. In this instance, a woman who had been an actress and model was treated for thirty-four years for difficulty swallowing. The doctor is using outdated methods, and even when she was first diagnosed, the radiology report was very different from what the doctor said it was.

In those years she was unable to swallow solid food and subsisted on food that could be liquefied. Wyler, naturally, is upset at the doctor, but the woman seems to have fallen for him after all these years. The reason she sought Wyler’s help was that the doctor is retiring and no one else does those treatments. She admits that she does not need the money, but she also wants an explanation from the doctor who seemed genuinely concerned for such a long time.

Of course, there is much more. There are numerous interesting plot twists. In one chapter it may appear that Elton does not have a chance if his case goes to court; in the next one new evidence turns things around for him. All the while, Wyler himself may be in trouble because if it can be shown that Elton’s claim was fraudulent and Wyler knew it, Wyler could lose his law license for defrauding the government. But why, then, does the city keep raising its offer to settle the case?

The lead lawyer representing the city keeps telling Wyler to accept the city’s offers or Wyler himself could be in trouble. At the same time, he is telling Wyler that he is acting on the orders of his superiors, but he refuses to let Wyler talk to them or even tell him who his superiors are. It may have something to do with the fact that it is an election year.

There is a lot of entertaining material in here. Not only are there a number of unanswered questions—these books are called mysteries, after all—but there are a number of thorny and clever legal questions that strike the reader as being realistic. This stuff really could happen.

N.B.: This novel contains the conflicting testimonies of the rape along with another brief sexual encounter. For this reason the book may not be for everyone.