Membership in the Law Club should get a boost from this well-told, character-driven story.
Six lawyers hide secrets…and so does the industrial building they team up to buy in Impellizzeri’s twisty thriller, one in a series.
The only thing more surprising than hotshot lawyer Archie picking up the check for an exorbitant dinner for six is his invitation to his lover, Felicity, and their four friends and colleagues to take a look at an old industrial building. “I’m about to change all of your lives,” he states. The plan is to purchase the building, which the financially strapped developer wants to sell at a loss and then renovate. “We can do something really creative here,” Archie tells his friends. “We can create something beautiful and special in that space.” For each member of the group, the opportunity seems golden. Ava announces she is taking a sabbatical from their law firm. “I’m going to live,” she says, “so this whole proposal comes at the perfect time.” For Holly, “suddenly a building we were all planning to buy together for barely a million dollars started to look like a nest egg. Our retirement fund.” But personal secrets and the building’s dark past threaten to shake the members of the group to their very foundations. This third installment in Impellizzeri’s Riversedge Law Club series is a standalone narrative that eschews courtroom drama for a compelling story of secrets and lies. (The Riversedge Law Club, an old boy’s network, is more a state of mind here than a driver of the story.) Chapters are told from the perspectives of the individual characters, fleshing out the players while deftly advancing the plot and planting little seeds of foreshadowing. As Holly, one of the six, asks in hindsight, “you might ask—if we had all known about that, would we have bought the damn building anyway?”
Membership in the Law Club should get a boost from this well-told, character-driven story.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781954332492
Page Count: -
Publisher: Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A standout in the series.
The sixth adventure of Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon explores the mysteries of human consciousness, the demonic projects of the CIA, and the city of Prague.
“Ladies and gentlemen...we are about to experience a sea change in our understanding of how the brain works, the nature of consciousness, and in fact…the very nature of reality itself.” But first—Langdon’s in love! Brown’s devoted readers first met brilliant noetic scientist Katherine Solomon in The Lost Symbol (2009); she’s back as a serious girlfriend, engaging the committed bachelor in a way not seen before. The book opens with the pair in a luxurious suite at the Four Seasons in Prague. It’s the night after Katherine has delivered the lecture quoted above, setting the theme for the novel, which features a plethora of real-life cases and anomalies that seem to support the notion that human consciousness is not localized inside the human skull. Brown’s talent for assembling research is also evident in this novel’s alter ego as a guidebook to Prague, whose history and attractions are described in great and glowing detail. Whether you appreciate or skim past the innumerable info dumps on these and other topics (Jewish folklore fans—the Golem is in the house!), it goes without saying that concision is not a goal in the Dan Brown editing process. Speaking of editing, the nearly 700-page book is dedicated to Brown’s editor, who seems to appear as a character—to put it in the italicized form used for Brownian insight, Jason Kaufman must be Jonas Faukman! A major subplot involves the theft of Katherine’s manuscript from the secure servers of Penguin Random House; the delightful Faukman continues to spout witty wisecracks even when blindfolded and hogtied. There’s no shortage of action, derring-do, explosions, high-tech torture machines, attempted and successful murders, and opportunities for split-second, last-minute escapes; good thing Langdon, this aging symbology wonk, never misses swimming his morning laps. Readers who are not already dyed-in-the-wool Langdonites may find themselves echoing the prof’s own conclusion regarding the credibility of all this paranormal hoo-ha: At some point, skepticism itself becomes irrational.
A standout in the series.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9780385546898
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Sept. 9, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
This mystery’s promising premise bogs down in an overloaded cast.
When one woman takes on another’s identity to uncover a crime, they both become suspects in a murder.
Aubrey Price and Camille Bayliss come from different worlds, only crossing paths because of the discovery that Camille’s husband, powerful lawyer Ben Bayliss, is hiding something terrible that affects them both. As the novel opens, Aubrey is driving Camille’s Range Rover, then teetering into a bar on Camille’s high heels, with Camille’s dress and credit cards and a wig that mimics Camille’s hair, pretending to be her because Ben tracks his wife’s every move and expenditure, and Camille wants to create a smokescreen while she sneaks into his office in search of evidence of that unnamed secret. But the scheme goes awry, and the women become each other’s alibis after Camille finds Ben murdered in their home. The first part of the book builds suspense and misdirection well, with Aubrey and Ben’s straight-arrow partner, Hank Landry, serving as first-person observers in some chapters while others track Camille. She’s a wealthy and privileged woman but not a happy one, stuck under the thumbs of her husband and her tyrannical father, Randall Everett, who pretty much runs their small Louisiana town. Aubrey was orphaned as a teen when her parents died in a car crash and has proudly fended for herself ever since, coming to depend on her four roommates, who have become friends. But as the cast of characters grows, it seems as if almost everyone in town has a motive for killing Ben, and the piling up of suspects and movements among different timelines can sometimes be confusing. And it all comes to a frustrating end when, after a whole school of red herrings, the solution to Ben’s murder arrives out of far left field.
This mystery’s promising premise bogs down in an overloaded cast.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2026
ISBN: 9780593834459
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pamela Dorman/Viking
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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