Brooklyn-born New Jersey class-action attorney turned author Norman Shabel has written seven plays and eight novels. Three of his plays have been produced off Broadway in NYC, Philadelphia, and Florida.

You can find novels from all our guests in our amazon store.

Prolific author and playwright, Normal Shabel had a difficult childhood. He grew up in a poor Jewish and Italian neighborhood called Brownsville in Brooklyn, NY. At the time, many immigrants as well as Jewish children like himself and people of color faced daily injustices. For example, he and his friends were beaten regularly by antisemitic gangs while walking up the stairs to enter his junior high school.

These early experiences led him to become a class action and personal injury plaintiff’s attorney as well as a criminal prosecutor. His eight crime novels are based on his 55 years as a practicing attorney and detail how such injustices play out in a courtroom.

His books offer a behind the scenes look at how lawyers navigate the prejudices and unconscious biases of judges and juries to get the best outcome for their clients. Reviewers have commented that only an attorney could have written some of the multifaceted courtroom scenes featured in his books.

The topic would be how the theme of injustice plays out in his books. He would discuss several of his books. One standalone interview just about his books would be great. What are some Saturday dates and times that you have available for a podcast interview for him? What is the name of the podcast again? Also, I will be out of pocket for the next two days, so, when you respond, please hit "reply all" to include my boss, Sharon, who is included here. Thanks so much.

• God Knows No Heroes – Based on the true case of a Rabbi in New Jersey that hired someone to murder his wife. Shabel was not his attorney, but he was a member of his congregation.
• Four Women – A depiction of the many women that Shabel represented over the years where builders were pushing them out of their homes so that they could make a profit.
• The Corporation – About the murder of corporate employees who were also stockholders in a company and could stop the merger of two very powerful companies. The merger was based on one of Shabel’s cases to show the corruption that exists when money and power are involved. However, the murders were artistic license.
• The Badger Game – Based on a true case where Shabel was the prosecutor who represented the State of New Jersey against accused murderers. It shows the prejudices, corruption, and thirst for power of the players, including judges and attorneys on both sides of the aisle. If the judge is biased against the defendant or his attorney, many decisions are in line with those prejudices.

Support the Show.

https://www.instagram.com/teatonicandtoxin/
https://www.facebook.com/teatonicandtoxin
https://www.teatonicandtoxin.com

Stay mysterious...

THE THREE COFFINS (THE HOLLOW MAN) (1935) by John Dickson Carr is celebrated for its exceptional execution of the locked-room mystery, a subgenre demanding ingenious plotting and cerebral depth. Many consider it the best locked room mystery of all time. Carr’s complex puzzles, cryptic clues, and taut, suspenseful atmosphere make it a mystery fiction masterpiece.

Read: Buy the book on Amazon.

Reflect: Check out the conversation starters below.

The Novel as a Riddle

“To the murder of Professor Grimaud, and later the equally incredible crime in Cagliostro Street, many fantastic terms could be applied — with reason. Those of Dr Fell’s friends who like impossible situations will not find in his case-book any puzzle more baffling or more terrifying. Thus: two murders were committed, in such fashion that the murderer must have been not only invisible, but lighter than air. According to the evidence, this person killed his first victim and literally disappeared. Again according to the evidence, he killed his second victim in the middle of an empty street, with watchers at either end; yet not a soul saw him, and no footprint appeared in the snow.”

Locked Room Lecture / Breaking Down the Third Wall

Ch. 17 contains the oft-cited “locked room lecture,” where Fell speaks directly to readers. Fell says, “[W]e’re in a detective story, and we don’t fool the reader by pretending we’re not.” Fell then describes the various ways murder can be committed in a locked room.

From the books we’ve read, Is this the first break in the third wall?

Method #7 from The Three Coffins (The Hollow Man) by John Dickson Carr: “The victim is presumed to be dead long before he really is. The victim lies asleep drugged (but not harmed) in a locked room. Knockings on the door fail to rouse him. The murderer starts a foul-play scare; forces the door; gets in ahead and kills by stabbing or throat-cutting, while suggesting to other watchers that they have seen something they have not seen. The honour of inventing this device belongs to Israel Zangwill [The Big Bow Mystery].”

Pettis says, “[It] would seem pretty sound to say exclude the impossible and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” (Sherlock Holmes, The Sign of the Four, 1890) (Compare with Poirot in Murder on the Orient Express, 1934: “The impossible cannot have happened, therefore the impossible must be possible in spite of appearances.”)

In The Story of Classic Crime in 100 Books (2017), Martin Edwards called this chapter “an extraordinarily bold move.” Do you agree? How did you feel about this chapter? And have the books John Dickson Carr mentioned stood the test of time as greats?

G.K. Chesterton was mentioned for the man in the passage. In The Wrong Shape, similar to Israel Zangwill, the killer rushes in pretending they are already dead and kills them while asleep.

Support the show

https://www.instagram.com/teatonicandtoxin/
https://www.facebook.com/teatonicandtoxin
https://www.teatonicandtoxin.com

Stay mysterious...

Penny has never met anyone smarter than her. That's par for the course when you're a savant - one of fewer than 100 in the world. But despite her photographic memory and superpowered intellect, there's one ystery Penny's never been able to solve: Why did her father leave when she was in a coma at age seven, and where is he now?

On Penny's twenty-first birthdya, she receives a card in the mail from him, just as she has every year since he left. But this birthday card is different. For the first time ever, there's a return address. And a goodbye.

Penny doesn't know the world beyond her mother's house and the special school she's attended since her unusual abilities revealed themselves, but the mystery of her father's disappearance becomes her new obsession. For the first time ever, she decides to leave home to break free of everything that has kept her safe and use her gifts to answer the questions that have always eluded her. What Penny doesn't realize is she might not be able to outsmart a world far more complicated and dangerous than she'd ever imagined...

Check out our guest Carter Wilson at CarterWilson.com

See more of Carter's book, and references from the episode in our specially curated list in our amazon store.

Carter Wilson is the USA Today bestselling author of nine critically acclaimed, standalone psychological thrillers, as well as numerous short stories. He is an ITW Thriller Award finalist, a five-time winner of the Colorado Book Award, and his works have been optioned for television and film. Carter lives in Erie, Colorado in a Victorian house that is spooky but isn’t haunted…yet.

Born in New Mexico in 1970, Carter grew up primarily in Los Angeles before attending Cornell University in New York. He lived in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and Miami before moving to Boulder, Colorado in 1996. Throughout his life, Carter has journeyed the globe for both work and pleasure, and his travels have been a constant source of inspiration in his fiction.

Carter’s writing career began on a spring day in 2003, when an exercise to ward off boredom during a continuing-education class evolved into a 400-page manuscript. Since that day, Carter has been constantly writing. In addition to his published novels, Carter has also contributed short fiction to various publications, and most notably was featured in the R.L. Stine young-adult anthology Scream and Scream Again.

Support the Show.

https://www.instagram.com/teatonicandtoxin/
https://www.facebook.com/teatonicandtoxin
https://www.teatonicandtoxin.com

Stay mysterious...