LATREILLE, Stanley

PERSONAL:

Married; wife's name, Barbara; children: five. Education: Earned law degree.

ADDRESSES:

Home—MI. Office—204 South Highlander Way, Suite 5, Howell, MI 48843.

CAREER:

Attorney, judge, and author. 44th Circuit Court, Howell, MI, chief justice. Worked as a newspaper reporter and editor for ten years.

WRITINGS:

Perjury (novel), Crown Publishers (New York, NY), 1998.

SIDELIGHTS:

Stanley Latreille worked for ten years as a reporter and editor prior to going into the law. For more than twenty years, he has served as a Michigan trial judge, hearing everything from rape and murder trials to civil cases and family litigation. He brings the benefits of his vast experience to his first novel, Perjury, a literary thriller about attorney Jack Brenner, who finds himself working a pro bono perjury case that soon becomes hopelessly complex.

A Kirkus Reviews contributor remarked of the story that "juries are more interested in mercy than in justice? An astute premise from … Latreille—who almost sinks the point with genre clichés." Cecilia R. Cygnar, in a more enthusiastic review for Library Journal, commented that "the lines between legal thriller and literary fiction blur in this striking debut." Entertainment Weekly contributor Vanessa V. Friedman believed that Perjury is styled in a fashion that is highly adaptable to the big screen; she drew similarities to the works of John Grisham and wrote that "what dramatic tension there is comes from the pull between the spirit and the letter of the law." However, Chicago Tribune contributor Chris Petrakos compared Latreille's writing style to that of Raymond Chandler, and commented that the author "has put together a well-paced, tightly crafted story with distinctive characters and nice twists."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, August 2, 1998, Chris Petrakos, "Nothing But Trouble: Tense Times on the Campaign Trail, A Parasite on the Prowl, and More," p. 4.

Entertainment Weekly, August 7, 1998, Vanessa V. Friedman, review of Perjury, p. 70.

Kirkus Review, May 15, 1998, review of Perjury, p. 681.

Library Journal, April 15, 1998, Cecilia R. Cygnar, review of Perjury, p. 114.

ONLINE

Canoe Web site,http://www.canoe.ca/ (August 27, 2004), Yvonne Crittenden, "Legal Thriller Novel Does the Job."

Hometown Life,http://hometownlife.com/ (August 27, 2004), "Howell-Stanley Latreille."

Livingston County Michigan Circuit Court Web site,http://co.livingston.mi.us/ (August 27, 2004), "Stanley Latreille."*