The Crime of Sheila McGough

This is an interesting book in that Janet Malcolm who likes to write books about quirks in the law, or stories where people's lives come undone because of criminals, has found a very quirky woman who ends up in jail fighting for her and her client's rights using quirks in the law. The unfortunate thing is that her subject, Sheila McGough is hard to understand in her logic and follow in her endless bird-walking soliliques. Malcolm cannot, she admits, rein her in or really explain her. The unfortunate thing about it is that it is only by her ability to move through the strange and on the edge machinations of McGough and the possible con man she is involved with does she have a coherent and interesting book. Unfortunately, we as the reader begin to feel as whacky as Mc Gough makes Janet Malcolm feel.A much better Janet Malcolm book is "The Poet and the Murderer." I highly recommend this story about a well-meaning museum curator who bids on a newly discovered Emily Dickinson poem only to realize later that it is probably a forgery by the famous ex-Mormon forger Mark Hofmann.

Iinteresting true story of how the criminal justice system can destroy a well-meaning lawyer. Maybe a little naive in accepting the lawyer's version of the facts, but a good read.

So smart it stings.

This brief account of true events is unlikely read without puzzling over what seems an unusual set of characters and their intersection. The author herself takes on a role no less than the title character. This book is enjoyable not only for an account of Sheila McGough's story, but in Janet Malcolm's personal account of finding it out. McGough, a small-time lawyer convicted and jailed for fraud associated with one of her con man defendants, claims she was framed by the US Department of Justice. After release from prison, McGough writes to Malcolm and eventually the two meet. The author struggles to ascertain McGough's seemingly irrational behavior towards and unflinching loyalty to her former client that ultimately helps land her in jail.That this short book would attract a one-star review from a principal character, Kirkpatrick McDonald, "an affluent fifty-eight-year-old investment banker" who, as Malcolm describes was one of those swindled by Bailes, and ultimately helps set in motion the prosecution of Bob Bailes and Sheila McGough, highlights the unfulfilled truth, while exemplifying the power of story.I found this Malcolm's telling engrossing less for it's basis as a historical novel, than in the thrill in the seek and an author's reaction to McGough's story. Note, the author admits to seeing Sheila McGough in the more positive light, the hero of the story, but without the personal involvement, the reader may have a harder time being convinced. Nonetheless, for a couple hours of your time, the story presented is thought provoking even if it leaves your wanting to be convinced left unfulfilled.

Janet Malcolm's portrayal of Sheila McGough is of conscientiousness gone awry; the over-zealous lawyer, hired by a con artist names Bob Bailes, guards her client's rights all the way to a prison cell. McGough found herself in the big house after a conviction for fraud: the "crime" she commited related to the disbursment of funds Bailes had deposited into her account. It's probably impossible to relate the complexity of the "crime" and McGough's conviction here, and largely beside the point: Malcolm's interest is in how the letter of the law moves against its spirit, and in those, like McGough, whom she feels to be caught in the middle of this dynamic. McGough, according to Malcolm, suffered from the disease of "literalism," understanding the words and acts but not the intentions and conventions that govern legal proceedings. Her portrait of McGough is sympathetic, though she records her own frustration with her as a subject prone to discursive irrelevancy and excess. Malcolm notes that for the most part McGough's words and action are not precisely irrelevant: just relevant on a scale incommensurate with the gestural and abbreviated, and self-serving practice of law as we know it.I enjoyed this book, though I found it a puzzle.It's immensly readable, but quite inconsequential in many ways. Malcolm avoids turning this into a case study of McGough's pathological literalism, which it surely could be, and instead presents her story as an allegory of the general disparity between intention and precise meaning. I found McGough, and her family, immensely charming, and found myself, like Malcolm, in sympathy with McGough's doggedness and loyalty, however misplaced.