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Sexual Abuse, Politics, and Justice

Author: Dan Schorr

Mountain Hill University has long been a bastion of education and sports, so the entire community is shocked to discover that the university’s star softball coach has been sexually abusing the girls under his care for years. Even worse – the university has known about it and been covering it up. The whistleblower – Serena Stanfield, the human resources director and only one not to know about the incidents and coverup – is now going viral for her meltdown on the pitch. Something will have to be done.

Looking to save the university, Mountain Hill hires C&R consulting, a supposedly renowned firm, to do an independent investigation. But C&R isn’t clean, nor is the new president of Mountain Hill, a former congressman. C&R is about to go bankrupt, and has also been backing author Caleb Lugo, helping him to intimidate the women who have been coming forward about his sexual misconduct. Inside the firm, young associate Troy Abernathy is torn between doing the right thing and surviving – and also making amends to his friend Julia. When the media finds out that C&R has a checkered history with sexual misconduct, the plot thickens around what is happening at Mountain Hill.

Meanwhile, we have an up-and-coming politician, Megan Black. Megan is mostly interested in getting clemency for her friend, Evina, a battered woman who is now facing life in prison for killing her abusive husband in self-defense. If Megan has to do something shady to save her friend’s life – she will. If that means that she rides the coattails of this Mountain Hill sex scandal to win a more powerful platform, then so be it.

Open Bar is touted as a thriller, but it’s really not. Instead, it’s a sleeper story about justice and the way the system does and (mostly) does not work. There are no true “good guys” here. Even Serena, the whistleblower, can’t go as far as she would like because her own child’s future is riding on her continued employment at the university.  What we have then is a mixture of politics, the human desire to thrive and survive, and the resulting subversion of justice.

Image by Marcos Cola from Pixabay

Only Troy really has moments of conscience about how the actual victims are being sidelined and used, once again, as pawns. But – if he doesn’t do this, then he is out of a job. The inner politics of C&R, of young associates new to the game just trying to survive, trumps justice. Besides, it’s becoming clear that justice is just something politicians talk about to the public – it doesn’t exist. It can’t, not with how broken everything is. Someone else will use the victims anyway.

The story only moves gradually (again thriller is a misnomer). It’s about the backroom deals, the conniving, the barbed conversations, the not-so-hidden agendas and threats. It’s about the complexity and grey areas of the real world and how justice is superseded by both human avarice and the desire to survive. While it moves slowly, it hits hard.

The only real qualm I have is that I never truly liked anyone or rooted for any character. Some stories entranced me more than others (I felt the wrangling in C&R was particularly realistic and hard hitting, whereas Evina’s story seemed a little left-field and sappy to me). But, of course, that’s the author’s point. The comic book stories of heroes willing to risk it all don’t evoke how the creaky justice system maneuvers around special interests, career building, and the brute effects of trying to survive by kowtowing to those in power.

Open Bar is a thoughtful book with a point. When it ends, we continue to think, and we have the distinct feeling that this book is more fact than fiction. Recommended.

 

– Frances Carden

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Frances Carden
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