Early Background
Patrick Hyde is the son of an industrial union official who was active in the 60s civil rights movement. He is also the grandson of a Harlan County, Kentucky coal miner. At age 16, Patrick moved from Ohio to Cambridge, Massachusetts. He attended the Satya School, an experimental school located off of Harvard Square, and later enrolled at Vermont's Goddard College, where he took mostly writing courses. At this time, Patrick wrote Timecrack, his first long work of fiction, and decided to spend his career as a lawyer and writer. He transferred to Brown University where he graduated with a Bachelor's Degree, Magna cum Laude and a Masters Degree in 1978. Two years later he received a Juris Doctor from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Legal Career
Patrick began his legal career as a Research Associate for the Legal Implementation Research Project at Wisconsin Law School. He co-authored a law review article published in the 1981 Marquette Law Review and various other research articles. He soon forsook academia and moved to Pikeville, Kentucky, home of the legendary Hatfield Family, where he spent his first year as a trial lawyer representing miners and indigents in court actions against pension funds, small coal operators, and others. In 1982 Patrick joined the Special Litigation Division of the U.S. Solicitor of Labor and moved to his permanent home, the Washington, D.C. area. He was the youngest member of a seven attorney team in Donovan v. Schmoutey, a massive federal lawsuit against a Las Vegas pension fund, the holding company which owned the Dunes Hotel & Casinos, and Morris A. Shenker, Jimmy Hoffa's St. Louis lawyer. During this time, Patrick had an opportunity to observe Anthony Spilotro-portrayed by Joe pesci in the movie Casino-as well as other legendary Las Vegas mobsters and mob familiars.
Back in Washington, Patrick was given a Special Achievement Award from the Secretary of Labor and went on to become a specialist in internal labor union affairs. Eager to gain more courtroom experience, he left government law practice to found a private D.C. law firm. From 1988 to 2000, he was counsel of record in over 1300 criminal cases and had over 100 trials. He served as President of the D.C. Superior Court Trial Lawyers Association, which is the largest association of criminal lawyers in the Washington, D.C. municipal courts. Patrick also served on the Executive Board of the D.C. Chapter, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and was appointed by the Chief Judge of the D.C. Superior Court to the Advisory Commission on Sentencing to the D.C. City Council.
In 2001, Patrick returned to government as a policy advisor specializing in internal union affairs.
Writing Career
Patrick's first publication was in CLIO: A Journal of History (1978) and entitled "No Neutrals: The Harlan County Coal Strike of 1931." This article detailed a famous miners' trial attended and chronicled by John Dos Passos and Theodore Dreiser. That same year he completed "From Coalition to Bureaucracy", a Masters Thesis on the struggle for control of the United Automobile Workers between a communist-led coalition and a coalition led by legendary labor leader Walter Reuther. Throughout the Eighties Patrick wrote various nonfiction pieces on labor law. His first published work of fiction was "The Suit", carried in an April, 1991 edition of the Washington City Paper. Throughout the nineties Patrick published various criminal law articles. His first novel, The Only Pure Thing, was released in January, 2007 and Patrick is presently working on the second novel, Scorpio Rising. Patrick is active in the Mystery Writers of America and has served on the Executive Board and as Vice-President of the Mid-Atlantic Chapter, consisting of the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virginia.
To contact Patrick Hyde, please send email to:
HYDE6226@aol.com