Striking again

Jonathan Miller comfortably wears three hats.

One hat is as a private lawyer doing contract work statewide for the New Mexico public defender’s office. Statewide, as in every state judicial district.

For years he was based in Santa Fe and wound up driving on average 4,000 miles a month to represent indigent clients in criminal cases.

Now Miller resides in Las Cruces and said he’s traveling about half as many miles per month because most of his cases are in southern New Mexico.

Miller’s second hat is as a fiction writer. He’s the author of a series of entertaining novels featuring the lead character, attorney Dan Shepard, nicknamed the “Rattlesnake Lawyer.”

“Rattlesnake Lawyer: The Breakdown Docket” is the title of the 13th and newest book in the series.

In the first half of the new novel, Miller paints descriptions of the major and minor characters. Dan’s car, named Malibu Stacy, and Dan’s well-remembered late mother are among the minor characters he references.

Miller also injects many digressive snippets of conversation, creating an air of Marx Brothers craziness.

Here, for example, are Dan and Wu, an office assistant, chatting about a cup of coffee Wu just made. Shepard called it “amazing coffee.”

Dan wants to know what’s in the coffee. Wu replies, “You don’t want to know. Ancient Chinese secret.” Private joke, readers are advised.

In the next paragraph Wu tells Dan that client Lexy Montaño just called and she was crying.

Better call her back, but first read her file.

Moments later, Wu takes another call.

This one is from Dan’s dentist. “You better take this. This is the third time this week (that the dentist has called),” Wu suggests.

That digression spawns a further digression about the cost of extracting Dan’s bad old teeth and the cost of implants.

Ready for another digression? “My dentist reminded me of Laurence Olivier as the evil Nazi in ‘Marathon Man,’” Dan thinks out loud.

Flip a few pages and there’s this disconnection: Lexy: “Breakfast tomorrow? They have a restaurant at the hotel called Tiffany’s. …”

Dan: “Of course they do. … We can have breakfast at …”

Lexy: “Tiffany’s. I get it.”

That’s a reference to the 1961 movie starring Audrey Hepburn.

The book is packed with isolated film references. There is even a section in which Dan is hallucinating scenes from “The Shining.”

Eventually, Dan is focused on building a case for Lexy.

She’s accused of shooting to death film producer Gabriel Rose and of attempted murder of the film director Anton Alaimo.

Lexy, a production assistant on the film, claims innocence. She accuses actor Cloud Roberts of shooting Rose from the roof of the Hotel Carrizozo in Tularosa. (The hotel is fictitious; the town is not.)

The second half of the novel is a sometimes frenetic courtroom drama.

Lexy’s trial takes place in the courthouse in Tularosa.

Part of the frenzy has to do with Dan juggling his in-person courtroom defense of Lexy with several concurrent cases in which he must appear, albeit remotely, for hearings in other cases in other courtrooms in other districts.

The trial ends with the jury finding Lexy not guilty.

But the novel’s story doesn’t end there.

His car wrecked and impounded, Dan is transported to the detention center in fictional Aguilar County to face a hearing on charges of contempt of court. He is charged with having missed 10 court hearings for clients.

Dan admits he was focused on the murder trial and had taken on too many clients and too many cases and should have provided them coverage.

The upshot? Readers will have to wait until the next book in the series to learn if Dan is off the hook.

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The third hat Miller wears is as a photographer. His photos, shot over the past five years, are packed in his newest book, “Enchanted Dockets: A New Mexico Judicial Journey.”

The book features photos of the exteriors of courthouses in all of New Mexico’s 13 judicial districts. On the front cover is the Lea County Courthouse in Lovington, framed by a rainbow and a puddle. The courthouse is in the 5th Judicial District, if anyone wants to know.

Puddles freshen a number of photographed courthouses in the book.

“New Mexico puddles are different since they’re so rare. They’re very clean and don’t last long,” Miller said in a phone interview. “There’s something zen about capturing the moment of the puddle.”

The book also has a group of Miller’s photos that are completely unrelated to courthouses.

They’re of New Mexico’s varied, enchanting natural landscapes — mountains, lakes, plains, stunning cloud formations and sunsets — as well as of human-made landscapes, including roadside attractions like business signs, silos, abandoned homes. One special attraction is the sculpture of two cowboys facing off on the shoulders of U.S. 285 between Roswell and Vaughn.

Miller should have incorporated text blocks, rather than labels, so readers and travelers could have more information about the landscapes and the objects photographed.