Unwritten

A curious thing happened when Walter “Skip” Walker began searching for a literary agent: He got rejected. Sometimes quickly, but often enough, in thoughtful, encouraging dissections of his work.

He kept trying. Eventually, through a friend of a friend, Walker found an agent in New York and said, “You’re probably not looking for new clients, but if you just read my rejection letters, you might be interested in what I’ve written.” The agent was intrigued, and wound up signing on.

Walker’s first book, the one all those agents were impressed by but passed on, was published in 1983 to rave reviews. A Dime to Dance By is about an unambitious lawyer forced to defend a local policeman. The Boston Globe said it “marks the debut of a promising mystery writer,” and The New Yorker labeled it “a first-rate and highly instructive story in which every character, every scene, every word of near-illiterate dialogue is perfectly in place.” Even more, in a banquet ceremony hosted by Shirley Temple, the Commonwealth Club of California honored Walker with an award for best first novel.

For Walker, who aspired to a career like British barrister and novelist John Mortimer, it felt like the cusp of true literary success. He sold international book rights and screen rights, envisioning a life where clients would “seek me out because they had read my books and felt like they knew me,” he says.

As a managing partner at Walter, Hamilton & Kearns, Walker’s cases have all come on referral, but mostly because of his legal—rather than literary—success. “I spent much more of my working life as a lawyer than perhaps I anticipated or envisioned,” he says, “but I don’t regret it. I feel very lucky to have done both.”

As a novelist, Walker is particularly fascinated by moral ambiguity. His second book, 1985’s The Two Dude Defense, features a dogged private detective unsure of what he wants to do or be. His third, Rules of the Knife Fight, was released a year later and focuses on a lawyer defending a friend who admits to murder. “What’s the right thing to do in this situation? It was the epitome of the theme I was pursuing,” Walker says.

In 1989’s The Immediate Prospect of Being Hanged, the protagonist realizes that his district attorney boss is more interested in self-promotion than justice, and in his fifth novel, The Appearance of Impropriety, professional basketball players exploit—and are exploited themselves.

The latter would be “the book that stalled my literary career,” Walker says.

“It was promoted as a sports book, and it just didn’t ever find its niche. I also suspect it wasn’t as good as the other books,” he adds with a laugh. “I went from being a rising star to being yesterday’s news.”
Fortunately, his legal one was just beginning to soar. “I was able to establish myself as a personal injury lawyer who handled high-profile cases and got good results,” he says, listing off the Alpine Meadows avalanche; the World Airways jetliner crash into Boston Harbor; the largest personal injury verdict in Plumas County; and the “great cow case” of San Mateo County.

Walker found plenty of moral ambiguity in law, too—but thankfully not with his personal injury clients. “On the plaintiff side, we have an advantage in that regard,” he says. “Something terrible has happened to the people who come to us. Their lives have been made worse; our job is to make them better. For the most part, we’re able to do that.”

In 2013, after a 20-year break, Walker’s Crime of Privilege was published. The novel finds politically connected members of high society getting away with heinous behavior—not through threats, but rewards. And Walker is currently working on Almost All-American, about a local football hero who accidently paralyzed a smaller teammate during a high school practice. Years later, the protagonist returns home and winds up being accused of murder. For legal help, he turns to the man he paralyzed, now an unsuccessful and bitter attorney, whose education and legal practice the protagonist has silently underwritten. 

“As a personal injury lawyer, I deal with people who have had terrible things happen to them, and I get to see how they react. I see people who do wonderful things to overcome what they’ve suffered. It is, in many ways, inspiring. It also instigates the feelings of ‘what-if’ that are at the center of a novel,” Walker says. “Sometimes the stories take off on their own and it’s, in large part, due to the experiences I’ve had working with people who’ve been through very stressful situations.”