Peter Brown

In 2019, I contracted with “Virgil” to write a book about his grandfather’s kidnapping. I got it published in 2023 and embarked on researching my next book, about a fascinating group of vigilantes I’d come across during research for the previous book. I let Virgil know I was working on another proje...ct, he encouraged me to seek a publisher, I found one and let him know. And at that point, something went grossly awry. Your vigilante book is going to be all about my grandfather, Virgil said, insisting the vigilante group was founded because of his grandfather’s kidnapping, and everything I’d be writing about them would be derived from my work on the book we’d done together. Well, no, not even remotely, I told him, startled by his assertions. There is the merest tangential connection between your grandfather and my vigilantes. Even the most superficial search of the old records would establish that. But Virgil wouldn’t hear of it, and he called Peter Brown, and Brown called me to let me know I was going to be sued. On what grounds? I asked. Virgil is utterly confused, I told him. My still-unwritten book will have nothing to do with his grandfather. And here is where Brown’s failings as a lawyer, and as a person, became obvious. Virgil didn’t need a lawyer, he needed help. He was frightfully confused, to the point of what looked to me like a mental health crisis. Brown should have gently eased him away from a groundless legal attack on me, and perhaps gotten his family involved. But no, as far as I can tell, Brown egged Virgil on, pretending there was a case there, and he called me and emailed me with repeated threats of a lawsuit. Facts didn’t matter, truth didn’t matter. Virgil might have been suffering from dementia, might have needed professional help, but as long as Virgil was paying the bills, Brown was glad to keep things going. “(Virgil) only sees a threat,” Brown wrote me, describing Virgil’s “deep concerns that ‘his’ story, or substantial parts, may be undermined by your current efforts,” and “If we don’t resolve this issue in the next few weeks, I am afraid he may try to press his legal rights against you and this project . . .” Brown was not above ridiculing his own client, it should be noted. When I told him I was fearful for Virgil’s mental health, that the poor man seemed to be suffering from severe cognitive problems, Brown replied tersely, “I think you have a clear understanding of the current situation.” Most likely, Brown was well-versed enough in authoring to know how vulnerable I was at that time. I had just signed a contract for the new book, with an aggressive manuscript deadline of less than a year away. I had received a tiny advance, all of which had already been spent on travel for research, so now I was dipping into savings. I was years away from any book revenue. So a lawsuit at that time, no matter how frivolous, no matter how grounded in Virgil’s fever dreams, would have been devastating to me. Just getting a lawyer involved would have cost me $5,000. And then there would have been hearings before a judge in New York or California, vastly greater expenses, and precious weeks lost fighting a bogus lawsuit instead of researching and writing. So I really had no choice. What did Virgil want, I asked Brown. How can I make this go away? Give him a big cut of your book, Brown told me, and almost half the movie rights. I said okay. What else could I do? Wherever there is a paranoid, brain-addled client, I fear, Brown will use them to go after other authors, other creatives, eagerly exploiting everyone's vulnerabilities to make a quick buck. NOTE: I shared this review with Peter Brown on September 13. He replied in less than two hours, rejecting it as a “false narrative,” but when I asked him what specifically in it was false, I never heard back.