Book Review: Punch Line

Reviewed by Peggy Kurkowski

Chance Cormac’s return to trial law is no laughing matter when a comedian is brutally stabbed for telling the wrong jokes.

Punch Line is the second entry in Richard A. Danzig’s series following pugnacious pugilist and litigator Chance Cormac. After a six-month suspension, Chancereturns to his practice to deal with two heavyweight cases that have the potential for devastating personal and professional fallout. 

Chance, fresh from an involuntary hiatus that led to his book about his experiences— titled Facts Are Stubborn Things—returns to work happy to find his colleague and IT expert Damian Pressler earning straight As at Fordham Law in the evenings. 

Still feeling the absence of his longtime paralegal (and love of his life), Sally McConnel, Chance asks Damian to scout for a part-time law clerk, and soon the office is humming along with the addition of Susan Chu, a fellow Fordham student and former Manhattan District Attorney trial prep assistant. She is also a third-degree black belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu—a perfect fit among a boxer and an ex-Navy Seal. “Chance felt he was finally back where he was supposed to be, working with a team he could trust.”

Meanwhile, an organization called the TRANS ACTION GROUP (TAG), has a problem of their own: a member on their steering committee wants the group to confront their vilifiers in a more direct way. Known only as Red—the committee has foregone gender identifying names for colors—he is in actuality New York City police officer Roland Wolff and he must hide his true identity at work. 

When he learns that Verne Slater, a local stand-up comedian, is telling jokes about trans people, he decides to act and brings Green, a reluctant fellow committee member, along to The Joke Factory. Red cannot abide “another insensitive comic ridiculing the trans community for cheap laughs. A comic using Red, and people like him, as a punchline for his sick jokes.”

Leaving the club in the wee hours, Verne is viciously stabbed in the back in the dark parking lot, but he survives. Unfortunately, he is left paralyzed below the waist and faces a long and expensive road to recovery before him. Along with his wife Rose, they reach out to Chance for help to legally claim indemnity against the club and its owners. 

But while Chance and team begin their investigation for a lawsuit, word gets back to Red, leaving him with one mission: to tie up loose ends before he is found out. Even TAG is afraid of him, as the president of the committee realizes “there is a very fine line between being a man who is mad and a madman.”

Danzig weaves a complex, tightly paced plot that is contemporarily relevant and edgy, more serial killer thriller than legal adventure. Readers will find it hard to stop reading as Red’s circle of targets shrinks closer around Chase and his team. Eschewing talk for action in Punch Line, Danzig hits all the marks in the latter—with devastating and shocking results. But Danzig knows when to use a scalpel instead of a hammer when it comes to writing about LGBTQIA+ and trans issues—his characters display thoughtfulness, empathy, and a willingness to learn. 

Along with a corrupt and murderous cop on the loose, Danzig has bandwidth for a subplot that brings Sally back to Chance’s brownstone office. Unsettled by a petition from her anonymous sperm donor for visitation rights, she seeks Chance’s legal help. The news leaves him “fighting mad,” and he will do anything to protect Sally and Melody from “a clumsy attempt by some stranger” to disrupt their lives. After all, Melody, now a feisty nine-year-old, is Chance’s goddaughter whom he still hopes to make his own. Danzig lets his protagonist twist a bit longer, hoping Sally will accept his proposal and make the family he longs for. One hopes a final romantic reckoning is in the stars.

Danzig escapes the dreaded sophomore slump in this second book of the series. Indeed, his craft hits another level. The pearl-clutching climax takes no prisoners, and Chance will feel the full force of how “sometimes the law provides a remedy but it doesn’t mean there is justice.”

Punch Line crackles with intensity, challenging readers to get inside the mind of a killer and go toe-to-toe with evil. Who will be left standing in the last round? 

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