The Crime of Sheila McGough
Reviewed by Barbara Strickland, Fri., June 23, 2000
The Crime of Sheila McGough
by Janet MalcolmVintage, 161 pp., $12 (paper)
Sheila McGough, Malcolm writes, was "a woman of almost preternatural honesty and decency." Nevertheless, in 1990, a jury found her guilty of collaboration in a scam run by one of her clients, Bob Bailes. McGough became implicated in Bailes' crimes when she allowed him to use her escrow account to hold stolen funds. She was convicted, disbarred, and sentenced to prison for a three-year term. Malcolm's writing, as always, is eloquent, witty, and directed by an odd sort of morality. She pitilessly scrutinizes the small-time con men who pulled McGough down and the mechanized legal system that ensured she stayed there. Unexpectedly, she finds in McGough an irritatingly literal-minded heroine who evokes sympathy but not liking. Malcolm also directs the same relentless scrutiny at herself, the journalist who inserts herself into the lives of others for her own purposes. Malcolm's occasional episodes of self-doubt slightly warm up her narrative of legal misconduct. The Crime of Sheila McGough is surprisingly thrilling, a self-aware exploration of the American legal system and of the journalistic process.
