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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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