Santa Clara Magazine Features Dennis M. Walsh's Nobody Walks

 

Thicker than water

This guy’s a lawyer? That’s what a number of the meth addicts, petty criminals, prostitutes, and porn stars involved with the gruesome 2003 murder of Christopher Walsh wondered about his relentless, tough-talking brother Dennis.

But, indeed, Dennis Walsh J.D. ’82, oldest son of a Cleveland cop-turned-Los Angeles-mobster, is a long-practicing criminal defense attorney. And much of the tension early in Nobody Walks (Thomas Dunne Books, 2013)—a gritty, hard-boiled account of his efforts to keep the case from going cold and bring Christopher’s killers to justice—derives from just how close Walsh came to stepping outside the limits of the law.

“Nobody walks” was the mantra—or threat—that Dennis Walsh repeated endlessly to a dizzying parade of fearful, low-life potential witnesses he hoped to convince to come forward and testify against the self-styled criminal mastermind who murdered Christopher when the two shared an apartment in Studio City, Calif. Walsh’s other brothers, some with criminal pasts like their father’s, wanted to dispense with legal niceties and exact vengeance on their own. Luckily, the police and prosecutors were just about as dedicated as the Walsh brothers themselves.

At the time of Christopher’s murder, Walsh was estranged from his youngest brother—whom the reader surmises was an addict and not a particularly nice guy. Still, Walsh makes it clear that he believes—rightly—that justice is for everyone, not just upright citizens. He also makes it clear that for the Walsh family blood is much thicker than water. 

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