mystery/legal thriller/Maine
Not Proven
by Woody Hanstein
Audenreed Press
A Division of Biddle Publishing Company
It looked like I was going to be late for work. Maybe thirty or forty years late. I had been sitting in the back of the deputy sheriff's cruiser for a long time. the handcuffs bit into my wrists and my shoulders hurt...Maybe I shouldn't have been so quick to tell the state police detectives that I wanted a lawyer...
You'll be hooked from page one. Woody Hanstein's first novel is filled with credible characters, twists and turns, and premises that would make a law professor lose sleep.
ISBN: 1-879418-61-4
©2000
$12.00 US
Softcover 272 Pages
To order this book...
REVIEWS
"For years I didn't read legal thrillers. If the story were realistic, I reasoned, then reading it would be like a day in the office—like curling up with the Maine Reporter. An unrealistic story, on the other hand—well, who wants to read an unrealistic story? Woody Hanstein's Not Proven" outsmarts this little syllogism by being realistic without being routine."
—Peter Sampson
Maine Bar Journal
"Throughout Not Proven Hanstein seeks to clarify questions rather than provide concrete answers.
The mystery may be cleared up but the dilemmas brought into focus thereby prove even harder to
dispel. It is this element of an ambiguity which increases as the mystery unravels that gives Not
Proven a depth and character beyond that of a standard thriller."
—Kenny Brechner
Franklin Journal
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Woody Hanstein, also known as Walter Hanstein III, is a well-known trial lawyer and has been involved in a number of high-profile criminal and civil trials in recent years. He has also argued a dozen cases in Maine Supreme Court.
Three times, he has represented defendants who were found innocent by reason of insanity in prominent murder trials. Most notable was Mark Bechard, who in 1996 was accused of brutally killing two nuns and wounding two others at Servants of the Blessed Sacrament convent in Waterville.
In the aftermath of those acquittals, Woody Hanstein strongly criticized the state's Forensic Service and played a role in changing the system, making it easier for Maine's most mentally ill citizens to obtain fairer trials.
He also describes himself as a crusader for citizens' legal rights in the so-called war on drugs in Maine, and he is trying to challenge one of those laws before the U.S. Supreme Court.