A NOVEL APPROACH TO THE LAW: Well-known local attorney decides to play detective

This was the cover story for the January 2006 East Side Monthly:

Here's an inspiration to anyone in the process of formulating a New Year's Resolution. Prominent East Sider John J. ("Jack") Partridge—founding partner of the law firm Partridge, Snow & Hahn, a man whose list of past and present "Professional and Civic Organizations" spans over two pages—has just published a novel. Plus, he promises, there's another one coming out next year. Makes the rest of us look like slackers!

The 367-page murder mystery set in Providence depicts an appealingly recognizable cast of characters, such as the colorful mayor, "Sonny Russo," with his gift for playing the media, his questionable ethics, and his unsavory henchmen. Entitled Carom Shot ("n.: In pool, a shot in which the object ball strikes another ball and rebounds into a pocket"), the book features the yellow Number One ball on the cover. Its already-written sequel, which will of course picture the blue Number Two ball, is scheduled to come out in September 2006. And when you envision the rest of the balls on the pool table, the possibilities are ... well, maybe not endless, but you can see where this could be heading.

How has it been possible to achieve all this, for an attorney who has a busy practice in insurance and banking regulation, general corporate law, and trustee work; and who serves as Co-chair of the Pawtucket Foundation, Vice Chair of the President's Council at Providence College (his alma mater, where he is also Class Agent for his graduating class), trustee of the Boys' and Girls' Clubs of Pawtucket, member of the Governor's Insurance Council, trustee and treasurer of Ocean State Charitiable Trust—to name fewer than half of his current community activities?

"I found time," is the simple explanation from the down-to-earth Partridge, who was born in Central Falls and lived most of his life in Pawtucket. Of the writing he's practiced as a sideline since high school, Partridge concedes, "It's certainly come and gone.... At P.C. you turn out an enormous amount of written material. We had at least a paper a week every week for four years." As a result, Partridge modestly claims, "I can sit down and fill pages!"

Throughout his career, he's had the support and encouragement of his wife, Regina (McDonald) Partridge, an artist specializing in monotypes and monoprints who's a partner at Studio Goddard-Partridge in Pawtucket; along with the couple's three (now grown) children, Sarah, Gregory, and David. "Every once in a while I'd sit down and express an idea I had in the back of my mind—story lines and movie scripts based on things I'd conjure up in the middle of the night.... I'd go down to the basement [in the family's Pawtucket home] or up to the office [in the East Side home they moved to nine years ago—an office Partridge describes as "lined with mysteries"]. Eventually I'd get it done. I'd do it on vacations—I'd fit it in!"

Until now, Partridge hasn't published anything but an occasional op-ed piece in the Projo. Much of his writing has been non-fiction, including a book outline about King Leopold of the Belgians, and another, written while in Italy, about a modern-day Machiavelli ("Unfortunately that idea was picked up and done by others!" says Partridge). Meanwhile, he describes the fiction-writing he occasionally turned to as "an escape, a getaway from the rigid, accurate writing lawyers do. It gets the mind out of the box."

Reporter's note: Anyone who's worked at a law firm is familiar with the "manuscript-in-the-drawer syndrome." Lots of law school graduates are ex-English-majors—good with words. When I was a paralegal in the Eighties, young associates often assured me, "I'm really a creative person!" "Look at me, I'm practically in tears, here," confided one as he pored over a tedious contract. And a junior partner once opened his desk drawer to reveal the screenplay he'd written in college. The firm seemed brimming with frustrated talent—a big reason not to apply to law school.

Unless you can manage to be like J. J. Partridge.

Over the years, Partridge has also found time for other interests besides writing and law, such as theater—he was an extra in local productions of "Meet Joe Black" and "The Last Shot"—and especially politics. He names the late John Chafee as his mentor. Partridge ran the 1970 gubernatorial campaign of Herbert F. DeSimone, who lost by only 1,871 votes (the exact number rolls easily off Partridge's tongue). Describing himself as interested in "good government" first and foremost, he left his position as Secretary of the Republican Party in the early 1970s to become Chairman of Common Cause, of which he still serves on the advisory council. Around that time, he was also involved in organizing the Rhode Island Constitutional Convention, which took place during a Projo strike, so that, according to Partridge, "there was virtually no coverage, and people thought they could do and say whatever they wanted." One example he recalls is someone literally holding back the minute hand on the clock above the speaker's podium to keep midnight from striking. (So far Partridge hasn't included that detail in a novel.)

"Mystery writing is fairly conventional," points out Partridge, who describes himself as a "voracious reader of every kind of book," especially mysteries, and especially series containing what he calls "continuing characters." He names among his favorite authors P.D. James, John LeCarre, Sue Grafton, James Lee Burke, Janet Ivanovich, and Tony Hillerman. The standard formula for a mystery, according to Partridge, involves a murder; a group of suspects with motive and opportunity; a sleuth; enough clues dropped along the way "so that the reader can say 'oh yeah' at the end"; and tensions created among the characters within a particular setting that provides convincing details of their daily life and work.

Carom Shot opens with the murder of a young white woman. The victim, whose father happens to be a member of the Providence police force, turns out to be a dropout from the East Side Ivy League "Carter University"— which the narrator describes as "a mini-state inhabited exclusively by the smart, the opinionated, and the stubborn," and whose "main drag," Thayer Street, "... is alive, trashy, nondescript, and very non-Ivy, having had the benefit of haphazard growth which permitted the funky, the offbeat, and the counter-cultural to prosper, survive, or disappear without notice." This murder may or may not be the work of The Stalker, a serial sex offender who's been preying on black Carter co-eds, creating a campus security nightmare that Mayor Russo, reluctant to provide more police protection, tries to pass off as solely the university's problem.

The sleuth is narrator Algy Temple, a fifty-year-old lawyer who serves as University Counsel, and whom Partridge, in an interview, describes as "a person whose roots go back as far as they can here in Rhode Island"—a character who, fittingly, at the low point of his morale tries to derive comfort and inspiration from the statue of the city's founding father in Roger Williams Park. Temple's family pedigree contrasts sharply with that of his close friend since childhood, Providence Police Commissioner Tony Tramonti, whom Partridge points out is "a good guy coming along, trying to make his mark, whose family came up the hard way." Tramonti is waiting for the right opportunity to run for mayor—undoubtedly material for the book's sequel(s). Narrative tension comes in the form of potentially shady characters neither the narrator nor the reader knows whether to trust; family obligations; rocky romance; and familiar-sounding town-gown politics ("Sonny Russo had made a career out of painting the tax-exempt University as a free-loading, snooty, drug-ridden, haven of liberal hypocrisy"). A campus rally featuring a black reverend/community activist provides the scene for a breathtaking climax.

Carom Shot uses as its epigraph the opening lines from the Eagles song "The Last Resort": "She came from Providence/ the one in Rhode Island/ where the old world shadows hang/ heavy in the air." A unifying factor for all the novel's characters is what Partridge calls the "old world murkiness" of the city of Providence, which he captures so well in descriptions of both the physical setting ("It was all so pristinely historic that it made me nostalgic for the neighborhood's remembered tawdriness") and the emotional atmosphere ("...if Providence politics has a texture, it is sandpaper"). "Sharing common experiences gives you the same approach to a lot of issues," says Partridge, who claims that whether you're from Algy's background or from Tramonti's, your "life experiences are very much the same....This state does promote, within families and groups, a 'let's get on with it' approach to life, a desire for good government, a desire to see your kids do well."

Like any fiction writer worth his or her salt, Partridge disclaims any direct connection between his creations and real life. "These characters get born and developed," he says, like a father talking about a child who grows up regardless of parental influence. "Some traits may be reflective of people I know. You can see I have an idea of what law firms are like, especially East Side firms.... Algy as a character came along fifteen years ago in my mind," asserts Partridge, admitting that with this novel, since it grew and developed over such a long period of time, "There's a bit of a time warp. This is not necessarily Providence today. I don't mean to say the Providence Police Department is currently as I describe it" (which is to say, manifestly corrupt). Of Providence politics in general, Partridge states it "has not always worked well—it depends on who's in various chairs. I like it when it's contentious, because it's more fun!"

With a variety of ethnic groups presented in the novel, Partridge obviously has taken care to avoid stereotypes, to be balanced and fair in his characterizations. One could argue that he is not quite so successful when it comes to gender. The narrator's love interest is a strong, intelligent (not to mention sexy) professional woman, but at times the book reverses real-life gender roles in a way that doesn't seem to do justice to the female population. For example, in the book the first black Ivy League university president, who's good at galvanizing and unifying the various factions on and off campus, is a man, while his incompetent predecessor from the Midwest who lasted only a few years was a woman. And that's just for starters. But to complain about such things puts one at risk of sounding like one of the politically correct whiners whom Algy Temple so sensibly disdains.

"The real writer is one/ who really writes," wrote the poet and novelist Marge Piercy in a poem called "For the Young Who Want To" that ends, "Work is its own cure. You have to/ like it better than being loved." And a (probably apocryphal) story describes the mother of author-journalist George Plimpton bragging at a cocktail party, "Anybody can write as well as George does. But George does!"

J. J. Partridge does, too. And the Providence literary scene is the richer for it.