THE HAULS OF JUSTICE

It will surprise nobody who has ever had a firsthand encounter with an attorney to learn that the biggest problem currently facing the legal-thriller genre is-what else?-an excess of paperwork. Recently, stacks of new novels by lawyers who want to be writers and by writers who think that they'd make good lawyers have been appearing as frequently as O.J. trial witnesses, only to be dismissed as quickly as O.J. trial jurors. New ideas, however, are trickling in at a much slower rate. Take, for instance, this semi-Firm premise: A slightly disreputable non-WASP attorney is hired by a deeply sinister all-WASP firm to do a job for a big payday, but only if he plays by their questionable rules. There you have the plot hook of both William Lashner's HOSTILE WITNESS (HarperCollins, $23) and Tom Topor's THE CODICIL (Hyperion, $21.95). As it happens, the very entertaining Hostile Witness achieves its best + effects by turning Grisham's law inside out. Victor Carl, our down-at-the- heels narrator, is eminently corruptible, and as Carl recounts his ''fall into outright whoredom,'' Lashner, a lawyer and first-time novelist, uses a torrent of sardonic gallows humor to smooth the way. In a genre that's often as subtle as a judge's gavel and as starchy and unimaginative as a stuffed white shirt, it couldn't be more welcome. Carl, a 30ish failure-in-the-making, has a disintegrating Philadelphia practice, a stack of unpaid bills, and a boulder-size chip on his shoulder about being excluded from the corridors of privilege and power. A break finally comes his way when he's invited to become cocounsel in the racketeering trial of a local political boss and his aide, but there's one catch: He is to serve as an uncomplaining patsy who will stand quietly by while his client, the aide, takes the fall. At first, there's no problem; Carl can happily be bought. And in great noir tradition, our hero is as dumb as he is greedy. When he meets the councilman's girlfriend, Veronica-an ice-glazed bombshell-he falls for her like an all-day sucker. Lashner dots Carl's road to ruin with some great characters-including a card table full of hammy, ancient mobsters whose cigars and hair tonic you can almost smell-and some awful ones. An editor's touch would have helped Hostile Witness' sex scenes, which-with their breathless references to searching serpentlike tongues and howling lionesses-come straight from The Zoos of Madison County. But give Lashner credit: Hostile Witness has many more good ideas than bad ones and a wholly uncompromised ending that both satisfies and sets the table for a promised sequel. Sequels to The Codicil may be in store as well; the novel's protagonist, Adam Bruno, has the feel of a character looking to settle into a long run. Here, he's hired by a white-shoe firm to look for the very lucky beneficiary cited in the will of one Matthew Marshall-the illegitimate child he fathered 20 years ago in Vietnam, who is now entitled to half of a $105 million estate. Adam's fee is a mere $600 a day, plus expenses, which is how you know he's got integrity. The lawyers who hire him have names like Dunlop, Tyler, and Laird and are possessed of expensive leather chairs and thin smiles, which is how you know they're soulless scum. Bruno is an impressively dogged investigator, and if The Codicil has an unconcealable fault, it may be that he does his job methodically, and that's about it. For most of the novel, Bruno simply meets and talks to anyone who might have known Marshall or his Vietnamese lover; when it's time for the book to wrap up, well, what do you know-he gets lucky! Moreover, as a narrator, he can't compete with Hostile Witness' more energetic and embittered Carl. Exhibit A: Here's how they describe the crusty old bastard of a judge who, by law, must appear in every single one of these novels. Bruno calls his voice ''sandpapery.'' Carl says it sounds like ''a handsaw eating through a log.'' The verdict: Hostile Witness: B+ The Codicil: B-