A refreshingly unsentimental reply to all those fairy tales about lawyers whose ideals rise miraculously from the ashes....
Another burned-out lawyer desperate for one last chance takes on another impossible case. But from then on in, the pseudonymous Cray (Keeplock, 1995) strikes out for chillier waters than John Grisham ever swam.
Ever since liquor and cocaine put paid to his courtroom success, tailor’s son Sid Kaplan hasn’t exactly been biding his time waiting for a comeback; in fact, if it weren’t for the unstinting support of his secretary Julia Gill and his investigator Caleb Talbot, he would’ve sunk beneath the waves long ago. And his latest case doesn’t exactly sound promising: Priscilla Sweet, already a hardened veteran of drug charges, doesn’t deny that she shot her husband, or even that she was muling coke for him; she maintains only that she shot him in self-defense. Fortunately, there’s plenty of evidence to support her allegations of abuse at the fists of Byron Sweet; unfortunately, he seems to have been sitting down when he was shot, drunk as a skunk and close to death from cirrhosis. As the publicity Sid took the case for begins to mount, so do the obstacles. Bulldog ADA Carlo Buscetta, naturally, wants to lock up Priscilla, who even Sid recognizes is one cold little number, and throw away the key; Byron’s African-American relatives seem poised to file a civil lawsuit of their own; a pair of lowlifes calmly assure Sid that Byron owed them $150,000, and that the debt has passed to Priscilla (broke and in stir), her mother Thelma Barrow (broke and skedaddled), and Sid (just plain broke). And Sid, haunted by family ghosts who’ll soon have company, begins to ask himself just why his client turned down a deep-pockets pro bono defense to seek him out in the first place.
A refreshingly unsentimental reply to all those fairy tales about lawyers whose ideals rise miraculously from the ashes. “Bad lawyer” is right.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7867-0825-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2000
Thriller fans will delight in this latest escapade. Cussler and co-author Burcell have delivered a winner.
The 10th and latest Sam and Remi Fargo adventure (The Romanov Ransom, 2017, etc.) is a fast-paced tale that reaches back to the early days of automotive glory.
In Manchester, England, in 1906, the Gray Ghost has gone missing. That’s the Rolls-Royce prototype developed by Charles Rolls and Henry Royce, and the loss threatens to financially ruin them. They hire a detective to locate it, but he is murdered. In the present day, Sam and Remi Fargo hear about the car, which turned up after World War II but is now missing again. It's always been owned by the Payton family, which generations ago was the Oren-Payton family, and may be worth many millions of dollars. Raising the stakes even higher, the 1906 thieves may have hidden treasure inside the car, though there was no trace of it when the Gray Ghost was found after the war. But jealous modern-day cousin Arthur Oren has the car stolen and then loses track of it—has the thief he hired stolen it twice? It’s a complicated and clever plot, with Sam and Remi trying to find it for the current owner, Lord Albert Payton, Viscount Wellswick. The 1906 journal of Jonathon Payton, fifth Viscount Wellswick, provides a solid backstory. The Fargos are great series characters, whip-smart and altruistic self-made multimillionaires who can afford to take time from their charity work to dabble in dangerous adventures. Oren knows they’re involved, and he wants them both dead and the car returned. An accomplice suggests first making the Fargos destitute by freezing their bank accounts and credit cards. Then the bad guys can arrange a fake suicide. It’s fun to watch Sam and Remi get out of dicey scrapes, once by driving an Ahrens-Fox pumper fire engine out of a blazing building. Oren asks, “How hard is it to knock off two socialites?” He finds out the hard way; he should have just acquainted himself with Cussler’s series.
Thriller fans will delight in this latest escapade. Cussler and co-author Burcell have delivered a winner.Pub Date: May 29, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1873-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
Chavez delivers a fraught if flawed page-turner that attempts too many twists.
A good Samaritan incurs a psychopath’s wrath in this debut thriller.
Veterinarian Cassie Larkin is heading home after a 12-hour shift when someone darts in front of her car, causing her to dump her energy drink. As she pulls over to mop up the mess, her headlights illuminate a couple having a physical altercation. Cassie calls 911, but before help arrives, the man tosses the woman down an embankment. Ignoring the dispatcher’s instructions, Cassie exits the vehicle and intervenes, preventing the now-unconscious woman’s murder. With sirens wailing in the distance, the man warns Cassie: “Let her die, and I’ll let you live.” He then scrambles back to the road and flees in Cassie’s van. Using mug shots, Cassie identifies the thief and would-be killer as Carver Sweet, who is wanted for poisoning his wife. The Santa Rosa police assure Cassie of her safety, but the next evening, her husband, Sam, vanishes while trick-or-treating with their 6-year-old daughter, Audrey. Hours later, he sends texts apologizing and confessing to an affair, but although it’s true that Sam and Cassie have been fighting, she suspects foul play—particularly given the previous night’s events. Cassie files a report with the cops, but they dismiss her concerns, leaving Cassie to investigate on her own. After a convoluted start, Chavez embarks on a paranoia-fueled thrill ride, escalating the stakes while exploiting readers’ darkest domestic fears. The far-fetched plot lacks cohesion and relies too heavily on coincidence to be fully satisfying, but the reader will be invested in learning the Larkin family’s fate through to the too-pat conclusion.
Chavez delivers a fraught if flawed page-turner that attempts too many twists.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-06-293617-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
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