Although it gets off to a slow start, "Paper Dragon" does develop into a quite interesting story of a five-day plagiarism trial. As a novel, though, there are shortcomings which do not permit me to give unqualified praise, although the author is consistent within his own style of presentation. Evan Hunter is an extremely prolific writer who has turned out six novels under his own name, as well as many pseudonymous works and short stories. Perhaps the best known of these is the "Blackboard Jungle." As is perhaps typical with a consistent producer of fiction, acclaim has been spotty. Hunter's books have been appraised alternately as authentically powerful, melodramatic, cliché ridden. "Paper Dragon" has elements of the three.
Set in the New York pre-Christmas season, the direct action takes place in a courtroom on Foley Square. But in the manner of many other courtroom dramas, the character development takes place through flashback and, as the book develops, out of court. Particularly at first, the flashbacks are onerous and irritating; the author seems to be begging the question of creating three-dimensional characters by amassing mere detail…. Much of this is almost insufferably banal. Yet at the final analysis, the bombardment of verbiage has given "roots" to the principals. Some of the stream of consciousness work is excellent.
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