Boston College Law School professor R. Michael Cassidy writes his first legal thrill based on a real crime.
Scheduled for release Sept. 25, the novel, “When the Past is All Deception,” is inspired by the brutal murder of New England Law | Boston professor Mary Jo Frug in Harvard Square in 1991.
“I served as a prosecutor in Massachusetts when this grisly crime was committed,” Cassidy said. “I have been haunted by the slaying ever since.”
Cassidy is no stranger to seeing his work in print.
The longtime BC Law faculty member is a nationally recognized expert in criminal law and legal ethics and his scholarship has been published in multiple highly ranked law journals. He is the author or co-author of three casebooks in the field of professional responsibility and the co-author of multiple editions of the “Massachusetts Guide to Evidence.”
Cassidy said when he decided to turn his attention from legal scholarship to fiction, he resolved to revisit the Harvard Square cold case and use it as a launching pad for his first novel.
“I have re-imagined the characters, and I have situated their conflicts amid the contemporary culture wars rampant on college campuses today,” he said. “In doing so, I hope I have drawn faithfully on my experiences as a prosecutor, a law professor and a Bostonian.”
The gruesome murder has remained unsolved for more than three decades.
Cassidy served as chief of the Criminal Bureau in the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office before joining the BC Law.
The upcoming legal thriller, set on a college campus, draws heavily on his knowledge of both academic life and criminal procedure.
Cassidy said he has enjoyed this recent foray into fiction and is looking forward to seeing how the legal thriller is received.
“I am sure many of my present and former colleagues will see parts of themselves in the story,” he said. “But I assure them that all of the characters are just an amalgam of a lifetime of experiences.”
Even the law school in the story has a fictional title, “in order to avoid any negative associations or inferences” about life at Boston College, “a place I love.”
What’s the novel’s storyline?
Cassidy’s novel tells the story of Mark Price, a conservative law professor, who finds himself removed from his classroom due to a burgeoning conflict with his students over issues of political correctness. As his problems on campus escalate, they pose complex challenges for his more liberal spouse, Susan Price, a partner at a downtown Boston law firm who has been nominated for a seat on the State Supreme Court.
On her way home from work one evening, Susan Price is stabbed to death near a church in Harvard Square. Susan was hiding something before her death, but what? The homicide at the center of this novel unfolds through shifting perspectives: those of the Prices, their two teenage children and the lead detective assigned to investigate the case.
