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

This is the third Tug Wyler mystery we have reviewed. This one is the most moving. As with the others we have reviewed, these may be less mysterious and more a legal conflict. This one does have some action which puts Attorney Wyler in danger, though.

Jenna is a fifteen year old double-dutch jump rope champion from Brooklyn. She is injured in a minor accident and the surgeon persuades her to have breast reduction surgery, which she consents to. When she comes to after the surgery, she has had a complete mastectomy.

She may have been self-conscious before, but now she is devastated. It is giving too much of the story away to tell how a homeless teen from Brooklyn ends up getting represented by a high-powered malpractice lawyer, but she does. Tug Wyler is both appalled by what happened to her and out to get her some justice. Indeed, as a person who has worked with teens most of my life, I cannot imagine a girl going through what Jenna went through. It certainly resonates.

Jenna is homeless, but not entirely without a family of sorts. Her mother has died under mysterious circumstances. Her stepfather is a low-level street hoodlum, but he is the closest she has to a legal guardian. And he truly cares little about her or anyone other than himself. Although he approved the surgery, he was pretty much gone from her life until he got wind that she might be getting a big payout from the lawsuit against the doctor.

There are also some hospital records missing. The doctor was supposed to record that he removed 150 grams of tissue from each breast, a standard procedure in this case. However, such verification seems to be missing. The doctor was paid by Medicaid, which does not normally pay for cosmetic surgery.

It smells fishy. And it really begins to stink when Wyler gets threatened and abducted by two men who end up getting killed by a third man. He is blindfolded the whole time so does not see any of them until he is freed and sees the corpses of his two abductors.

There is always at least one unrelated subplot in Tug Wyler stories. After all, most lawyers are working on multiple cases at a time. This one involves the son of the capo of a crime family. He is trying to sue someone for negligence which caused a broken leg. Wyler is convinced the case has no merit, but he also realizes that turning down the case could mean that he has become an enemy of organized crime.

Jenna’s Case develops out of the criminal underworld—street crime, organized crime, and even medical criminality. It is an emotional case, but also one that makes us appreciate what a good lawyer can do—and what honest doctors do, for that matter.