Errors and Omissions

By: Paul Goldstein

Narrated by: Paul Michael

From one of the foremost experts in the country on intellectual property law, a gripping legal thriller of depth and complexity

Meet Michael Seeley, defender of artists’ rights, take-no-prisoners intellectual property litigator—and a man on the brink of personal and career collapse. So when United Pictures virtually demands that he fly out to Hollywood to confirm legally that they own the rights to their corporate cash-cow franchise of Spykiller films, he has little choice but to comply.
What Michael Seeley discovers in these gilded precincts will plunge him headfirst into the tangle of politics of the blacklisting era and then into the even darker world of Nazi-occupied Poland. He’ll encounter Mayer Bermann, the steely Polish émigré who founded United Pictures—and who may lose control of it to a ruthless conglomerate; Bert Cobb, the putative author of the original Spykiller screenplay; Harry Devlin, the flamboyant defender of Hollywood writers who has his own secrets; and Julia Walsh, an alluring young USC film scholar whose research may hold the key to the mystery of Spykiller's true authorship. As the pressure mounts for Seeley to confirm United Pictures’s ownership of the franchise, Seeley must face down his own demons and finally travel to Munich to confront the reclusive novelist Max Kanarek, who fled Hollywood decades before and whose boyhood link to Mayer Bermann is the tantalizing missing piece of the puzzle.
In Errors and Omissions, Paul Goldstein has crafted a masterful novel of legal and moral suspense that draws on historical fact and legal scholarship for its unmistakable authenticity. A worldly thriller for grown-ups, it introduces an exciting new talent.©2006 Paul Goldstein; (P)2006 Books on Tape

Critic reviews

“It’s difficult to convey the mounting excitement with which I turned the pages. . . . the writing [is] masterful, not one wasted word. . . . A terrific read.”
—Sue Grafton

“[S]pins out a fresh, sharp-witted drama about Hollywood’s blacklist. . . . Goldstein, who does a fine job of breaking down complicated moral, ethical and historical issues to understandable nuggets, has laid the foundation for what could be a strong franchise.”
—Publishers Weekly

A Thoughtful Conundrum Chaser

Lawyers frequently battle conundrums - those puzzles with more than one correct answer. Often it's the lawyers job to convince a jury that his/her solution is correct. In fact, when not coming upon a conundrum, the law encourages lawyers to create them out of full cloth.

Goldstein is a brilliant man. Which can be an impediment when trying to explain stuff to someone like me who, well, isn't. Wha's obvious to MensaMan ain't to many of us. I wish I'd had a teacher like Paul Goldstein during dry, difficult, even tedious graduate courses.

He's a law professor and a specialist in intellectual property rights. How to make that sizzle? Turn some of the toughest questions into a murder mystery that feels set in a noir 40s film. No, it SEEMS set there. In fact it's set today on both American coasts and in the heart of Europe. And the challenges of intellectual property law are the spice of the plot.

Look, it's easier to read Goldstein doing it than to 'plain how he does it.. Here's an entertaining plot I'll probably forget, charged with great legal puzzles that'll stick in my mind like a popular tune.

Yep, I liked Errors and Omissions a lot, and especially because Paul Michael did such a great theatrical job presenting it to me.

Big Disappointment

This book suffers from two fatal defects. First, the plot is incomprehensible -- not that you can't follow it, just that the characters' motivations for the choices they make are simply unfathomable. At each plot fork, the author seems to have his characters choose the least likely, most ill-conceived choice possible. At first, I thought maybe this was some sophisticated post-modernist riff on the legal thriller. But, and this leads me to the second defect, the language itself is so stilted and cliched, that I was left to conclude that this book is just awful. Save yourself.

Fell asleep

I tried real hard to listen to this and give it a chance. but I just couldn't take it anymore. I was so bored. I gave up after an hour.