Donny Kimoe is having a rough go of it. At some point in his life, he decided to use his lawyer skills to defend enemies of the state. Most of his friends are still the high-powered attorneys he used to work with. He’s divorced, and oh yeah, America is a police state in active collapse that consistently flaunts the laws it purports to uphold. It doesn’t get him down though, but that also might be the drugs he uses to stay up late researching to help his clients in any way possible. So when his latest client, a documentarian named Xilena Rocafuerte, is charged with terrorism after witnessing the lynching of a popular local opposition leader, Donny licks his chops at stopping the system from grinding her under its boot heel. But in order to make his case, Donny will have to make great sacrifices to keep her free as he reveals conspiracy after conspiracy that are only the tip of the iceberg.
Rule of Capture started a bit rough for me. I didn’t know what to expect, and my brain immediately started to pick apart its flaws. But a few chapters in, I started to warm up to Donny. His Saul Goodman energy and hapless, but darkly comedic pursuits kept me coming back. It took me a little while to realize that this book had been out for a few years, and once I realized it was a 2019 release, I became fully invested in Donny’s crusade. Brown’s writing captures the frenetic energy of Donny’s drug-addled escapades and his inability to catch a break. To be fair, he goes around with a pack of straws with one tip cut off so he can shoot the rest of the cover into everyone else’s face, but he’s the kind of guy who would do it one last time before someone puts him out of his misery because he can’t stop. It makes him a compelling follow, especially since he really knows his shit when it comes to the law that the government keeps breaking for its own ends.
I never read Tropic of Kansas, the book that started the universe within which Donny swims like a fish in an oil spill. It’s an America ravaged by climate change, and reeling from its loss to China in some kind of war. Climate mitigation strategies are finally forced down its throat because to break those laws would incur the wrath of a global community that toppled the U.S. government from its top seat. But that doesn’t stop the governments within these United States from cracking down on their own people like an unending game of whack-a-mole. Texas is a sacrifice zone and is under an emergency declaration of martial law, and that’s where this all takes place.
And while I consider Better Call Saul one of my favorite tv shows, courtroom dramas are not really my bag. BCS breaks the mold through its intricate characters whose lives are like black holes, they can’t help but pull you in. It also highlights the inadequacies of the system he operates in, and how little it actually cares about the justice it doles out. Rule of Capture has that same feel to it. It’s also aided by Brown’s experience as a lawyer (though he freely admits in the acknowledgements he is not a criminal lawyer), giving that drama a tense feeling. Most courtroom stuff to me feels like technicalities that need to be unearthed as weak points for the goliath that is the state and prosecution. Here, it feels like Donny has to negotiate with Goliath, and he’s already been put in a headlock and his arms are tied behind his back. He searches desperately for that one neat trick, and Goliath just does not give a fuck.
Now that would have been enough for an entertaining read that confirms certain biases that I hold about the world we live in. But Brown had to go and make it about land. And folks, I have been thinking a LOT about land, climate, indigenous struggles, and well, everything that the state does to ensure that our relationship with land is filtered through the lens of property. Obviously, Rule of Capture does not solve the problems, and it doesn’t even really highlight all of the problems when it comes to navigating those relationships. It’s the first book within a trilogy. But goddamn does it try, and for me, it succeeds.
It succeeds because Donny still has a spark of hope within him that he can push through the contradictions of a state that no longer adheres to the rule it’s founded on. He’s surrounded by people who are more focused on getting their job done, making money, and hitting their 2 o’clock tee time while the world falls apart around them because of the decisions they keep making. His hope leads to some truly dangerous places, not only for himself and his client, but the future of the people inhabiting the North American continent. He tries desperately to make it all make sense, and every time he seems about to round a corner, he encounters another bend, and another and another. I was endeared to his plight because the book itself feels desperate in its search for understanding a country in complete disarray. And where this hope, this spark of optimism, that he can detangle this mess by getting an innocent woman (who by the way, does not seem to give a single fuck about the charges) out of the government’s sights leads him to make bad deals. It makes for a truly compelling read that has left me wanting more of Brown’s world, and his plans for Donny and the people he is tangentially involved with.
There is a lot I’ve left out, but one last thing I want to leave you with is that this book is begging to be read. It’s a bad time out there, and a lot of what occurs in Rule of Capture is of a similar flavor, especially when it comes to criminalizing those who are not “us.” But it engages with ideas, somewhat peripherally here, that while not “solving” those problems, at least offers a path to rethinking how we relate to a land and social context that is changing rapidly. I will be reading more of Brown’s work, that’s for sure. And I hope you do too because we can’t be doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result, unless that result is that it just gets shittier.
Rating: Rule of Capture – Charged with insightful and darkly comedic commentary
-Alex
A copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The thoughts on this book are my own.