Brooklyn federal judge pays homage to the late, crusading DA Ken Thompson in novel ‘Race to Judgment’
A federal judge is going from law to lit in a ripped-from-the-headlines novel about Brooklyn’s wrongful convictions and its bare-knuckle politics.
Brooklyn Federal Judge Frederic Block's "Race to Judgment" puts the crusading, determined lawyer Ken Williams in the middle of a maelstrom. There's his fight to free an innocent man from prison and save another man from lock-up. Then there's Williams' bid to unseat the entrenched Brooklyn District Attorney.
If it sounds familiar, that's the point.
Block's book, set for release Oct. 10, is a fictionalized take on the very real, high-profile battle to overturn Jabbar Collins' murder conviction. It's also inspired by the late Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson's successful 2013 run against longtime incumbent Charles Hynes.
The hard-boiled tale is dedicated to Thompson's memory. The main character, Ken Williams, was "fashioned after" Thompson.
In the book's preface, Block said the seeds for the narrative began with Robert Harris' “An Officer and a Spy” and Ken Follett's "Fall of Giants" — both works of fiction set against dramatic historical times like World War I and the Dreyfus Affair.
He said he was intrigued by using artistic license on real events and a friend suggested he do the same with his own cases and their connected elements.
"I was taken by the idea and started to believe that I had a good story to tell by taking literary license with these real-life experiences to develop the plot lines of my novel," Block wrote. "I call it reality-fiction."
After Judge Dora Irizarry vacated Collins's 1995 conviction in 2010, Block was assigned to Collins’s civil lawsuit. Block denied the city's bid to toss the case and the city settled with Collins for $10 million in 2014.
Thompson wasn't Collins's lawyer, though in the book Ken Williams represents JoJo Jones, the character named for Collins. But the story otherwise tacks to Thompson's career trajectory, ending with his rise to Brooklyn District Attorney after a hard-fought election.
Thompson died of cancer last year at 50.
It's not Block's first foray into writing outside court rulings. In 1985, he co-wrote an off-Broadway musical called "Professionally Speaking." And in 2012, he looked back on his legal career in the non-fiction book "Disrobed."
