Proof that a legal case can be riveting long after the trial is over.
An attorney offers a confession of sorts to a Manhattan socialite concerning a murder trial in which he was the teen defendant in this mystery/drama.
At his regular drinking hole, lawyer David Stillman has a chance encounter with Michaela Fitzgerald. The socialite is worried she may soon go to jail for a probation violation, having served a few years in prison for her involvement in a drug case. But then David starts divulging details about his startling past to Michaela after she notes his apparent melancholy. Fifteen years ago, when David was 15, he and his friend Barney Jenson were on trial for murder. The boys, along with peers Carl and Teddy, were unmitigated delinquents, primarily immersed in vandalism. While they couldn’t always evade the law, they were successful enough in their criminal endeavors to be known around town as hellions. As David inches his tale toward the murder that prompted his and Barney’s arrests, he also tells Michaela of his recent client, Tracey Chisholm. Her case parallels David’s own—15-year-old Tracey faces a murder charge. But what really shakes David is the prosecutor in Tracey’s case, Trotter Daniels, the same lawyer who tried convicting him and Barney of murder. Completing his confession to Michaela will lead to a revelation, but not necessarily one David may anticipate. Despite knowing some of the trials’ outcomes (David clearly isn’t in prison), Leibig’s (Almost Mortal, 2016, etc.) lucid novel is rife with mystery. For one, David’s chronological flashback doesn’t reach the murder for some time, while the result of Tracey’s trial is likewise not immediately revealed. The engrossing, hard-edged story isn’t about mere teen mischief but rather youngsters on a dangerous path (“We were thirteen, really bored, and not scared enough”). Daniels even argues the teens’ acts were hate crimes, as a handful of victims were minorities. Leibig’s complex tale offers no easy answers: The justice system affects the boys, including Carl and Teddy, in different ways. Still, the ending delivers surprises (even for David) and a fair amount of resolution.
Proof that a legal case can be riveting long after the trial is over.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-980335-25-2
Page Count: 211
Publisher: Trevaller's Playground Press
Review Posted Online: March 12, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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