A compelling courtroom drama that overcomes its limitations.
Two Polish American lawyers defend a Black Latinx activist in this sequel.
In this legal thriller, Charns brings back Star Gwiazda and her law partner, Zenko Luczek, now court-appointed attorneys defending Marcos Salazar Jones against charges of shooting a Durham, North Carolina, police officer. Zenko is certain that the officer shot himself and framed Marcos, a local Black Lives Matter activist. But the lawyer has his doubts about whether the jury will agree, or if the talented but unpredictable Star’s courtroom theatrics will be too much. The tension remains high from jury selection to verdict, with the toppling of a local Confederate statue and vandalism and violence against Star and Zenko making life outside the courtroom just as complicated. The story’s subplots touch on a wide range of topics, from hockey and the Polish American experience—Zenko’s narration often turns to his childhood in Detroit’s Polish community—to the law partners’ histories of mental illness, while keeping a focus on the events taking place inside the courtroom. The narration is cynical and biting (the police officer is “a Robocop Mr. Clean without the earring”; Zenko attributes his success to “Al-Anon, hockey and staying out of bad relationships, not necessarily in that order”) as well as entertaining, keeping the pages turning despite the almost too-detailed courtroom play-by-plays. While the book spends more time on the minutiae of legal practice, precedent, and witness questioning than most in the genre, it does so in a way that feels informative and engaging rather than tedious. The novel does have its limitations. Some typos are distracting (“The smell of lemon-scented bleach, sweat, and sewage envelope us”), and a plot twist on the work’s penultimate page turns the tale’s emotional resolution on its head, cutting into the sense of vindication that dominates to that point. But on the whole, the thriller is a satisfying read, telling a solid story while exploring questions of faith, Whiteness, and relationships and incorporating current events and present-day realities into the framework of a classic fight-the-system tale.
A compelling courtroom drama that overcomes its limitations.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 225
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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