Virginia Lawyers Weekly

Martin F. Clark Jr. – the Patrick County Circuit judge steadily earning fame as a novelist – liberally salted his latest work with recognizable references to people and events around his home town of Stuart. As word spreads about “The Legal Limit,” his third novel, Clark frequently finds himself explaining the links between his fiction and the lives of his family and neighbors.

The references need little explanation for those who live and work around Stuart. A Southwest Virginia lawyer seeking escape in popular fiction is jarred to suddenly encounter his colleagues as characters in the book, with their real names preserved. Two-thirds into the book, Martinsville attorneys Pat Sharpe and Jim Haskins are hired by the protagonist as his criminal defense counsel.

At a recent event in Pittsburgh, Clark said that he was asked if people were able to recognize themselves in his novel’s characters. “It’s not hard when I use their real names,” he responded.

Clark is generous to his adopted lawyer characters. He describes Sharpe as “deft at developing his case with thoughtful, compact questions that left witnesses no space to hedge or lie.” Haskins is “a warrior from the first pleading to the last post-trial motion, shrewd and persistent.”

“It’s pretty neat,” said Sharpe, who has appeared before Judge Clark on criminal and civil cases. “Jim’s a good guy and a friend of mine. We both had a little chuckle about it.”

“Of course, it’s very flattering. I try to really perceive it that I just have a good name for a lawyer in a novel,” Sharpe said.
There may be more to Sharpe’s inclusion than just the name. Sharpe played a critical role in a well-publicized criminal case that seems to have inspired certain plot elements of “The Legal Limit.”

Sharpe was one of the lawyers for a confessed killer named Billy Ray Manns. A prosecutor offered Manns an enticing deal for him to testify against two men accused of hiring him to do the killing. Martin Clark, wielding the judge’s gavel, not the author’s pen, was presiding over one of those cases when a Patrick County jury convicted the defendant of murder-for-hire.

Clark later publicly announced in open court that he did not believe Manns’ testimony. Still later, murderer Manns confirmed the judge’s suspicions by recanting his testimony under oath.

A few details of the ugly Manns story echo in “The Legal Limit.” In the book, a small-town reprobate serving a lengthy drug sentence bargains for early release based on his willingness to testify that his own brother committed murder.

Other accounts in the novel were similarly inspired by real events. Clark discloses a personal vignette that became a poignant account in the book. As a young man, he accompanied his father, then-Patrick County Commonwealth’s Attorney Martin F. Clark Sr., as the senior Clark was arrested and booked on a bribery charge. (He was later exonerated and still practices law in Stuart.)

“I remember going with him when it was time for him to be processed, with the fingerprints and mug shot. It was awful,” Clark recalled.

Details of that experience emerge in “The Legal Limit” as the hero, also the county commonwealth’s attorney, is processed on an indictment for murder.

Clark offered another thinly disguised tribute to his father in the name of the “steady, conscientious” judge who helps the hero out of his legal predicament. “Phil Moore” is the character’s name. Both Clark and his father share the middle name “Fillmore.”
Clark tips his author’s hat to fellow circuit Judge David A. Melesco of Rocky Mount, referring to him as “Andre Melesco.” Asked about the reference, Melesco explained by asking, “Have you ever seen the two of us together?” Apparently, Clark has taken to calling the much taller Melesco “Andre” in reference to the former wrestler and actor known as André the Giant.

“It was fun to write it on a second level for people who live in the community,” Clark said.

“There’s a lot of good local folks in there,” said Barnie Day, a former state delegate and frequent political essayist who lives in Stuart. “Most are pleased with the recognition.”

Although Clark makes no secret that his work is inspired by actual events, not all of the allusions in the novel are obvious, even to his neighbors. Clark makes it clear that he will talk about only some of his inspirations – others are off limits.

In an introduction to the novel, Clark alludes to hearing a “remarkable history” from a local in November of 2003 that led him to investigate and confirm details of the account. He will say no more. “Lots of people have tried to get it out of me,” he said.

Regardless of what the Stuart townsfolk think about their treatment in the book, Clark’s third novel is gaining an audience far beyond the farms and fields of Patrick County. Favorable reviews have come from the Los Angeles Times, National Public Radio and the Washington Post.

At press time, there still was no verdict from The New York Times.

The broad appeal is understandable. “The Legal Limit” is less a legal thriller and more a Southern gothic novel of family treachery and small town intrigue. “It’s a terrific read,” commented Day.

Nevertheless, the book makes a point aimed squarely at the judiciary and those who make the rules that judges must follow. Judges, posits Clark, occasionally need to put a twist on the strict dictates of the law in order to accomplish a higher degree of justice.

“It’s an interesting time to speculate on how much discretion judges should have,” Clark said, referring to the issue of the inherent authority of Virginia judges to take cases under advisement, an issue left unresolved by a recent opinion of the Supreme Court of Virginia.

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