A simple but engrossing mystery with a New York accent.
A Brooklyn attorney is determined to recover his losses after someone clears out all of his bank accounts in Avitabile’s crime novel.
Al Forte rightly suspects something is amiss when a $40 check he’s written bounces. But he’s unprepared for the news that his bank accounts, both personal and his law office’s, are completely empty. His federally chartered bank isn’t very sympathetic, as there have been instances of lawyers hiding their own funds and claiming identity theft to recoup allegedly stolen capital from the banks. But his bank’s suspicion primarily stems from Al’s association with his paternal cousin, Mick, a (mostly) legit businessman from a mob-affiliated family. However, Mick’s maternal cousin, Eli Ativa, who’s also an attorney, is likely the unwitting culprit. He recently borrowed Al’s laptop, which someone seems to have hacked. As Eli is frustratingly absent and hard to track down, Al searches for clues at the cafe where Eli often works. He eventually learns that a dubious individual with a particular device was indeed in the vicinity of Al’s laptop. Unfortunately, the bank has notified the New York Lawyers’ Fund for Client Protection, which looks into misconduct by attorneys. Now Al and Mick must prove to its grievance committee that someone stole Al’s information when some people still believe he’s a swindler. The second book in the series that began with Occupational Hazard (2018), this installment is a quietly engaging mystery that consists largely of scenes driven by dialogue, as characters discuss who’s behind the theft and how. But there’s abundant tension, as Al faces threats such as imprisonment or disbarment, or both, while Eli’s apparent disappearance is unsettling. The author refers often to the first Al and Mick novel, and one of its characters is a potential suspect in this story’s crime. Readers new to the series will easily follow along, though there are spoilers aplenty. Although Al and Mick are a fascinating pair of polar opposites, Mick’s incessant castigation of his cousin for not heeding warnings of Eli’s untrustworthiness quickly wears thin. Fortunately, Mick’s lawyer, Richie Abbatello, who both helps and encourages Al, is a nice counterbalance.
A simple but engrossing mystery with a New York accent.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73230-632-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: March 9, 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
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.
When a man accused of rape turns up dead, an Early American town seeks justice amid rumors and controversy.
Lawhon’s fifth work of historical fiction is inspired by the true story and diaries of midwife Martha Ballard of Hallowell, Maine, a character she brings to life brilliantly here. As Martha tells her patient in an opening chapter set in 1789, “You need not fear….In all my years attending women in childbirth, I have never lost a mother.” This track record grows in numerous compelling scenes of labor and delivery, particularly one in which Martha has to clean up after the mistakes of a pompous doctor educated at Harvard, one of her nemeses in a town that roils with gossip and disrespect for women’s abilities. Supposedly, the only time a midwife can testify in court is regarding paternity when a woman gives birth out of wedlock—but Martha also takes the witness stand in the rape case against a dead man named Joshua Burgess and his living friend Col. Joseph North, whose role as judge in local court proceedings has made the victim, Rebecca Foster, reluctant to make her complaint public. Further complications are numerous: North has control over the Ballard family's lease on their property; Rebecca is carrying the child of one of her rapists; Martha’s son was seen fighting with Joshua Burgess on the day of his death. Lawhon weaves all this into a richly satisfying drama that moves suspensefully between childbed, courtroom, and the banks of the Kennebec River. The undimmed romance between 40-something Martha and her husband, Ephraim, adds a racy flair to the proceedings. Knowing how rare the quality of their relationship is sharpens the intensity of Martha’s gaze as she watches the romantic lives of her grown children unfold. As she did with Nancy Wake in Code Name Hélène (2020), Lawhon creates a stirring portrait of a real-life heroine and, as in all her books, includes an endnote with detailed background.
A vivid, exciting page-turner from one of our most interesting authors of historical fiction.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780385546874
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Aug. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
