The Holders of Helmut Street: A Leopold Larson Mystery

Who do you call when they want to protect you to death?As Ben Holder descends into dementia all he wants is to have his dysfunctional family around him. With one daughter in jail for murder and the other children in various stages of failure-to-thrive, the courts, the cops, and the caseworkers have other ideas about what is best for him. Retained to protect Ben, Leopold Larson, must make sense of the Holder family and protect his client from the creeping oppression of court protection.In the second book of the Leo Larson series, Leo is still practicing law out of a two-room office nestled among the used-car dealers and Mexican restaurants of Portland, Oregon's east side. Never more than a stone's throw from disbarment, he keeps sober due to a renegade recovery group that has been expelled from respectable AA and keeps his license due to the not-so-gentle ministrations of his legal assistant, Peggi. In The Holders of Helmut Street, one meets the lawyers, judges, social workers, psychologists, and professional guardians who step in and make a living where elders have lost the ability to protect themselves. Sometimes, however, the cure is worse than the disease.