Wick Downing

Wick Downing is a Denver author who has written ten novels, primarily murder mysteries and courtroom dramas, under the names Wick and Warwick Downing. Three won the Colorado Author’s League Top Hand Award and two were nominated for the Colorado Book award.

His most recent publication, The Trials of Kate Hope, is a novel for young readers. Set in Denver in the summer of 1973, this is the engaging story about a teenage girl who “reads law” in the office of her crusty old half-blind grandfather. They find a wrinkle in the law and she becomes an attorney: his partner in the firm of Hope and Hope.

One of their clients is a fragile old woman whose only family is her dog--and the city has an order for the dog’s destruction. Kate knows how to write legal briefs and draw up complaints, but her grandfather is the trial lawyer for the firm. However, on the eve of the old woman’s trial, the feisty old lawyer collapses. Suddenly Kate is her lawyer. She must try a real case. In front of a real judge and jury. Against a real prosecutor.

Mr. Thomas got behind the lectern, where he stood like the president addressing Congress. Miss Willow clutched my arm, her blue hands cold with fear. "They won't take Herman away from me, will they?" her tiny voice pleaded.

"We don't know yet," I whispered.

But I knew. Mom's smile, so full of optimism and faith in the power of right to overcome wrong, deserted me. Justice was a joke in the real world of the legal system, I thought. It was nothing but tricks and tactics the lawyers used to keep the jury from finding out the truth. All that mattered was which side had the slickest lawyer.

Leonardo’s Hand is also a novel for young readers.  Leonard Smith, called “Nard,” turns out to be the kind of boy who surprises everyone, including himself.  An orphan with only one hand, Nard is used to bouncing from one foster home to the next.  Then he moves out to the Swedenborge farm.  A relic from the past, the old homestead is stuck in the center of a wealthy suburb.

Life on the farm is hard.  But Anna is the mother Nard never had, and it’s there he meets Julie, the same age as Nard and a gifted dancer … destined to spend her life in a wheel-chair because of her spine.  And it’s there that the disembodied hand of Leonardo da Vinci walks into Nard’s life, and insists on calling him “Master.

This unlikely trio enter an inventors’ contest, hoping to pay Julie’s huge medical bills and save the farm from land developers.  Then Nard gets greedy and wants everything for himself.

Leonardo's Hand is a magical and unforgettable novel about a boy's search for a place to call home.

Click here for teenreads.com's review of Leonardo's Hand.