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Lawyer & Law Firm Network News
Laura Miranda is a truly exceptional criminal defense attorney, a leader with a heart who cares about her clients and the judicial system. A graduate of Cornell, both undergraduate and law school, Ms. Miranda is fluent in both English and Spanish -- and her intelligence distinguishes her as advocate with both the experience (more than 17 years as an attorney) and talent necessary to win important cases.
This week she is joined by Carl Hiaasen and John Berendt.
In this exclusive interview, Laura reminds all of us of basic "Miranda" rights:
The Police must inform an accused, s/he has the right to remain silent and anything said can and will be used against him/her in a court of law; an accused has a right to consult with an attorney and to have the attorney present during questioning. Furthermore, the police must also inform the person accused if indigent, a lawyer will be appointed. DO NOT WAIVE YOUR MIRANDA RIGHTS. DO NOT SPEAK, OR SURRENDER YOURSELF TO POLICE WITHOUT AN ATTORNEY PRESENT. You can reach Ms. Miranda directly at 212-629-4500, or email laura.miranda@lawmiranda.com
Carl Hiaasen, Part humorist, part muckraker, his satirical novels about greed, crime and corruption in the Sunshine State have become fixtures on the best-seller list and embraced by influential literary critics who compare him to Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken.
He is also an award-winning childrenĄ¯s author and a former investigative reporter-turned-columnist for the Miami Herald.
And he has made a career of documenting, analyzing and interpreting what may be the most bizarre state in the union -- and one, Hiaasen says, is "a victim of its own geography."
Whether he's writing fiction or journalism, Carl Hiaasen's main character is always Florida, that axis of weirdness that gave us the sagas of Elian Gonzales, and dimpled "chads." It's also where developers build homes around gravel pits advertised as "lakefront property," and where marijuana falls out of the sky.
This is how Hiaasen describes Florida: "The Sunshine State is a paradise of scandals teeming with drifters, deadbeats, and misfits drawn here by some dark primordial calling like demented trout. And you'd be surprised how many of them decide to run for public office."
His latest novel,"Nature Girl", is a winner. Old fans and newcomers alike should delight in Hiaasen's 11th novel (after 2004's Skinny Dip), another hilarious Florida romp. The engaging and diverse screwball cast includes Boyd Shreave, a semicompetent telemarketer; Shreave's mistress and co-worker, Eugenie Fonda; Honey Santana, a mercurial gadfly who ends up on the other end of one of Shreave's pitches for Florida real estate; and Sammy Tigertail, half Seminole, who at novel's start must figure out what to do with the body of a tourist who dies of a heart attack on Sammy's airboat after being struck by a harmless water snake. When Santana cooks up an elaborate scheme to punish Shreave for nasty comments he made during his solicitation call, she ends up involving her 12-year-old son, Fry, and her ex-husband in a frantic chase that enmeshes Tigertail and the young co-ed Sammy accidentally has taken hostage. While the absurd plot may be less than compelling, Hiaasen's humorous touches and his all-too-human characters carry the book to its satisfying close.
John Berendt, author of the bestsellers , "The City of Falling Angels
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" and former editor of New York magazine from 1977 to 1979, and wrote a monthly column for Esquire from 1982 to 1994.
Berendt has written for David Frost and Dick Cavett, was editor of New York magazine from 1977 to 1979, and wrote a monthly column for Esquire from 1982 to 1994.
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil became a fixture on bestseller lists and was made into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood. Some of the real people profiled in the book became minor celebrities in their own right -- most notably Berendt's drag-queen friend Lady Chablis, who played herself in the movie and later published an autobiography.
Readers wondered what Berendt would do for an encore, but the author was relatively slow to oblige them. It wasn't until more than ten years after the publication of his first book that Berendt released The City of Falling Angels, a portrait of Venice as experienced not by tourists, but by its year-round residents, who turn out to be as eccentric and weirdly compelling as the Savannahians of Midnight in the Garden. ("The man whose palazzo features three space suits and a stuffed monkey is par for the course," noted Janet Maslin in The New York Times Book Review.)
In talking with Berendt about the way he works, what struck me were the similarities between written and photographic documentary reporting: how the good photographer and the good writer go about doing the spadework that produces something worthwhile. In either case, there is no substitute for being there, no substitute for taking one's own blessed time to immerse oneself in the subject. No substitute for letting time and circumstance wash over you and produce the odd juxtapositions and remarkable coincidences that can inspire an almost-novelistic-at-times visual or written narrative.
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