8-19-06, 9:06 am

Errors and Omissions, by Paul Goldstein, Doubleday, New York, 2006

Disillusioned and alcoholic, Michael Seeley, an intellectual property lawyer on the verge of losing his position in his firm, is about to be disbarred for verbally assaulting a judge. Once an idealist who helped artists fight for control of their work against corporations who only view art as a vehicle for profit, Seeley has come to believe that many artists are probably just out to make a buck too. In Paul Goldstein’s first novel, Errors and Omissions, Seeley has one last chance to deliver a blow for artistic integrity, one last client to save his job and his ideals.

In a desperate search that takes him from Hollywood to Munich, Seeley is caught up in a puzzling drama that dredges up the hidden history of the Hollywood blacklist and the personal vendettas of that town’s corporate elite. In tracking down the author of a screenplay, called Spykiller, a 1950s thriller that became the basis of the fictional United Pictures studio’s financial success, Seeley becomes the unwitting pawn of a powerful movie mogul, his own law partners, and his own emotional struggles. Seeley even gets a close-up look at the inner-workings of the relationship between the studios and the writers’ union.

To save his job, and the future of the studio, Seeley must either sign a questionable legal opinion that states the studio is the true owner of the screenplay or he must convince the screenwriter to sign his rights to the film over to the studio. But the author’s secrets confuse a clear-cut task. Bert Cobb, identified as the author, as it turns out, was a front for the real blacklisted writer who only briefly lived in the US. Max Kanarek, apparently the true author of Spykiller, was a 'real Communist' who had been actively involved in Los Angeles-area party activities, but disappeared in 1951 just before being called to testify before California’s notorious 'un-American' committees.

Seeley quickly realizes that this case is far more complicated than it appears on the surface. Events turn violent as secret corporate interests and motives of revenge come to the surface. His path to personal liberation – from alcohol, from his manipulative law firm, and from penury – is bound up with a mystery that spans decades and involves the lurid stories of betrayal and deception in the dark period of McCarthyism in post-World War II America.

Goldstein’s novel, a rare account of the McCarthyite period, gives a class basis for the blacklist and the investigations, but he also foregrounds the personal toll it took. Seeley’s new friend, the academic, Julia Walsh, who befriends him and aids his quest, even points to the corporate interests behind the McCarthyite binge, showing how it was used more to expel the Communist and progressive leadership in some of the Hollywood unions rather than allay fears about Communist culture pervading the public through movies. At the same time, this story’s main characters are driven by motives of revenge and bitterness, using the blacklist to target personal enemies.

Errors and Omissions compares favorably with the best legal thrillers of the likes of John Grisham, and the plot’s chase and process of discovery qualify Goldstein for a high position among recent crime fiction.

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