A chilling view of the vagaries of the justice system, with a final surprise.
A debut historical novel re-creates a sensational 1964 murder trial in Lorain, Ohio, in which the author’s father was co-counsel for the defense.
Casper Bennett has been arrested for the murder of his wife, Florence, whose lifeless body he found in a bathtub of scalding water. After unsuccessfully trying to reach Ray Miraldi, who had been his lawyer for several civil matters, he hires well-known criminal attorney Lon Adams. But Adams seems to be dropping the ball, overburdened with another case. Casper’s brother, Chester, implores Ray to team up with Adams. Ray, formerly a successful city prosecutor, had resigned his position to focus full time on his private legal practice, choosing to concentrate on civil cases. The responsibility of a potential guilty verdict in a criminal case, and the consequential loss of his client’s freedom, weighs heavily on him. But, in this instance, he believes in Casper’s innocence—that Florence’s death was accidental, the result of a drunken fall —and the two attorneys agree to work together. Miraldi’s narrative is a detailed reconstruction of the investigation and the trial, with considerable attention paid to the personal backgrounds of many of the participants. Although the author is working from historical records, including his father’s files, the transcripts of the court case no longer exist. And so Miraldi, an attorney himself, imagines much of the trial. But because all of the characters (specific police officers, the district attorney and his assistant, the judge, etc.) are real, and the author includes photographs and copies of certain documents, the final product seems reportorial, more docudrama than novel. Nonetheless, this is an engrossing tale, and Miraldi carefully lays out the frailties of the criminal justice system—from dubious police procedures to prosecutorial personal agendas. He deftly describes the questioning of one witness who saw Casper the night in question: “She couldn’t say for sure, but the persistent police detectives had finally convinced her that it was very close to nine p.m. After that, they finally left her alone.”
A chilling view of the vagaries of the justice system, with a final surprise.Pub Date: June 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9989189-0-7
Page Count: 404
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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