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Ross Mackay, The Saga of a Brilliant Criminal Lawyer by Jack Batten
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Ross Mackay, The Saga of a Brilliant Criminal Lawyer

True Cases: Book #6

$31.49

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Narrator Lorene Shyba

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Length 9 hours 47 minutes
Language English
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Ross Mackay, The Saga of a Brilliant Criminal Lawyer is great fit for people who love Perry Mason’s courtroom drama and Better Call Saul’s criminal subculture. Two murder trials were held in Toronto in the spring of 1962, only nineteen days apart. The accused man in each trial, one a pimp accused of stabbing a fellow pimp to death, the other a thief who killed a policeman in a shootout, were the last two men to be hanged in Canada. Toronto criminal lawyer Ross Mackay was the counsel for the accused in both trials, a mere thirty years old when he lost them both to the gallows. But the trials were far from the last times that Mackay defended accused murderers in the most horrendous circumstances. Author Jack Batten tells the story of Mackay’s dedication to the maxim that every man is entitled to a defence — a a story of Mackay’s courage and the harsh penalties he paid for the daring and controversial choices he made in life and in the courtroom.

Jack Batten graduated from the University of Toronto Law School, class of 1957, but chose to make his living as a freelance writer. As well as countless articles for such magazines as Maclean’s, Rolling Stone and Toronto Life, he has written more than forty books. Seven are crime novels, and the rest cover a range of nonfiction. These include several biographies. His book about the long distance runner Tom Longboat won the Norma Fleck Award. Many of the other biographies portray lawyers and judges in professional action in and out of courtrooms in every region of Canada. Jack Batten lives in Toronto with his wife, the writer and garden designer Marjorie Harris.

Lorene Shyba PhD is publisher at Durvile & UpRoute Books and series editor of the Durvile True Cases series. She is co-editor, with Raymond Yakeleya, of the Indigenous Spirit of Nature Series.


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Reviews

“A compelling and insightful chronicle of a brilliant, eclectic and charismatic maverick. With his impeccable eye for detail, Jack Batten has also captured the temper of the times—when the collegiality of the ‘bar’ referred to a place not a profession and when the road to respectability for most criminal lawyers remained challenging. Despite the roller coaster of his life described with candor and compassion, it is Ross Mackay’s unfailing dedication and steadfast commitment both to his clients and to justice for all which will remain his lasting legacy.” ­ —Brian Greenspan, Criminal Lawyer “When tragedy hits the gifted, the loss is hard to explain. But Jack Batten succeeds. He marries journalism and law, meticulous fact-driven research, to give us this riveting book on the talented Ross Mackay, who flew too close to the sun.” —Hon. Nancy Morrison, Former Judge of The Supreme Court of British Columbia “An excellent and easy read for anyone interested in Canadian legal history. Ross Mackay was an exceptional criminal lawyer, who has the dubious distinction of representing the last two persons to be executed in Canada for murder. As the book correctly shows, his personal demons, which the pressures of those two cases exacerbated, never impaired his interest in the human condition, his empathy for his clients nor his unflagging desire for justice.” — John Rosen, Criminal Lawyer Expand reviews
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