A winsome familial team reinforces this story of judicial proceedings.
In Avitabile’s debut legal tale, a Brooklyn lawyer takes on a paternity case that pits him against powerful attorneys who fight dirty.
When Mary Woodley needs help collecting child support, she turns to a former co-worker, Al Forte. He’s a real estate lawyer, not a litigator, but he likes Mary and can’t find someone else to represent her, so he takes her case. Some time back, after drinking with her then boss, attorney Gordon Gilbert, Mary woke up in bed with Gilbert and later learned she was pregnant. She bore a son, Roger, but hasn’t been able to reach Gilbert and wants financial support. Unfortunately, Gilbert and his lawyer, John Stillman, immediately attack the paternity suit, claiming Al is out for revenge. Gilbert, who’s a deputy mayor, was head of the now-dissolved law firm Gilbert & Associates, where Al worked before Gilbert fired him for his “liberal ways.” Al’s street-smart cousin, Mick, who has spent time in prison, offers his assistance. Al declines the help and subsequently lands in jail on a bogus charge of violating a judge’s order. It seems Gilbert and Stillman are not above unethical means to win cases. Mick, however, has his cousin’s back and employs his numerous connections, hoping to ensure that Al and Mary are the victors. Avitabile’s short, brisk novel aptly shows how a seemingly simple lawsuit can turn into a dogged legal battle. Gilbert, for example, fights Mary’s requested paternity test, while Stillman threatens her with a defamation suit despite her not going public with the allegations. The story makes good use of a duality between the cousins, who grew up together but took separate paths. Still, too many characters extol Mick’s capability and beneficial alliances; even Al’s wife, Theresa, berates her incarcerated husband for not accepting Mick’s help and is hardly concerned that he’s in jail. But Al and Mick are a savvy, delightful duo alongside stellar supporting characters such as Richie Abbatello, Mick’s criminal defense attorney, and Francesca, another cousin and the receptionist at Al’s office.
A winsome familial team reinforces this story of judicial proceedings.Pub Date: July 27, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73230-630-1
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
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
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