Flack's Last Shift

WHERE LAW AND JOURNALISM MEET: A NEW NEWSROOM NOVEL ABOUT A FLEET STREET LAWYER AND THE TRAUMAS OF HIS PAST

An appreciation by Elizabeth Taylor and Phillip Taylor MBE of Richmond Green Chambers

Flack is not a hack. He has an abiding love of journalism, but he is not a journalist; he is a lawyer. Specifically he is what is known as a night lawyer. For those who aren't quite sure, a night lawyer is a strange sort of fish -- or night owl, actually -- who prowls nocturnally and works punctiliously on a major newspaper to make sure that said newspaper doesn't get sued for something libelous or generally actionable that's scheduled to appear in print the next morning. Rather than damage limitation, this is damage prevention. Law suits can be expensive.

With his sharp eye, incisive mind and impressive legal credentials, Oxford educated Harry Flack has saved his newspaper tons of money. But now, with decades of experience behind him, having frequently rescued his paper from financial ruin over the years, Flack must retire.

This debut novel from lawyer and journalist Alex Wade is the saga of Flack's angst-ridden last shift on his beloved Fleet Street broadsheet, the Record. But more than that, it is about past traumas that have affected Flack's life and not for the better. Looking retirement in the face, Flack -- as Wade puts it -- 'must go home and confront the loneliness of his life.' He has shared with his boss, says Wade, 'an undying love of print media, a love which was happy to speak its name and which would withstand all, even the internet'. But Flack has also had another love which has destroyed him.

Dig deeper into this curious yet compelling novel and you discover via flashbacks, why Flack when young suddenly abandoned his lucrative law career and the promise of a partnership to become a night lawyer. Yes, he loves newspapers, which he reads by the ton, much to the annoyance of his fiancé Helen, a lawyer at one of those magic circle firms where she ends up photocopying documents all day. Craving a lot more excitement in her life, Helen soon finds it in the arms of aspiring journalist and accomplished love rat, Eddie Conrad. Decent, unsuspecting Flack catches them in flagrante one day and -- yikes, shock, horror – he does absolutely nothing, except dump Helen -- and his flat -- and his law career -- and every future prospect that could have come with it. Helen herself is shortly dumped thereafter by the ruthless Eddie. It is at this pivotal moment that Flack discovers his true vocation and sails forth on the uncertain seas of night lawyering, where he becomes almost universally acknowledged, sometimes grudgingly, as 'one of the most respected Fleet Street lawyers of his generation'.

Fleet Street's finest is what Flack definitely is, but as he reminisces about all this on his very last shift, he is in for another shock. A new editor arrives. It is none other than his old nemesis and hate object, Eddie Conrad -- and -- double yikes, more shock, and more horror -- Fleet-street hardened Flack now plots to destroy the man who once destroyed him.

Killing is too good for the lordly Eddie, the archetypal office bully (who loves saying things like: 'you all know who I am'). Flack's plans for him are arguably a lot worse than death. Published by London-based Blue Mark Books, 'Flack's Last Shift' is a newsroom thriller with unexpected twists of plot and revealing insights into the fraught and frantic world of the press, particularly those aspects of it where law and journalism meet.

In the author's words, Flack's daily – or well, nightly – task has been to 'navigate the twin frontiers of the legally acceptable and the linguistically permissible.'

But Flack doesn't merely hunt down and destroy stray apostrophes (good for him!), he must be constantly on the alert for all those juicy exposes which, without a radical re-write, 'cannot be published owing to the complete and utter absence of admissible evidence.'

Flack's career is illustrative of the changes that have taken place in the media in the past quarter century as the book touches on privacy actions, super-injunctions, phone hacking scandals and a lot more -- all amid the relentless development of information technology. The phlegmatic Flack, always under pressure and obsessed by his own heartache, emerges as a character with hidden depths. No wonder he just plain loses it, so to speak, at the end of his career.

If you haven't already guessed, the book's title deliberately references 'Krapp's Last Tape' a (mercifully) short play by Samuel Beckett about a failed writer.

But don't let that put you off. The book is a rattling good read and, more so if you are… or have ever been… or desperately want to be… a journalist or a lawyer!