Warmhearted, satisfyingly inventive and almost too clever for its own good. Why isn’t Rosenfelt a household name like...
A lawyer who’s never tried a criminal case suddenly finds himself with the world’s unlikeliest pro bono client: a woman convicted of murder who demands the right to end her life so that she can donate her heart to her dying daughter.
New Jersey doesn’t have the death penalty, so there’s no way Sheryl Harrison can be legally executed for the murder of her husband Charlie, even though she confessed at the scene six years ago. Once her request finds its way to about-to-be-fired associate Jamie Wagner, however, he’s so smitten with the woman who calls him “Harvard” that he instantly starts doing his best to make her wish come true. Jamie does get Sheryl taken off suicide watch, but the New Jersey State Prison for Women insists on keeping her alive despite her fervent wishes. There’s only one dim hope: that Jamie can get her original conviction overturned so that the woman he loves can go home and kill herself. After all, Newark police detective John Novack has never been entirely convinced of her guilt even though he’s the one she confessed to. As these unlikely allies go forth on their quixotic mission, Rosenfelt presents tantalizing glimpses of the criminal mastermind they’re up against: domestic terrorist Nolan Murray, a computer hacker who’s prepared to cause high-casualty havoc throughout the nation’s tech-dependent transportation and energy sectors if his extortion demands aren’t met. What this monster has to do with Sheryl’s plight, and whether Jamie will be able to fulfill her wishes and bid her farewell, are questions Rosenfelt answers with all his accustomed dexterity (On Borrowed Time, 2011, etc.).
Warmhearted, satisfyingly inventive and almost too clever for its own good. Why isn’t Rosenfelt a household name like Michael Connelly and Jeffery Deaver?Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-59837-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Dec. 27, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
The fairy-tale ending calls for some convenient coincidences and changes of heart, but Scottoline’s legion of fans will be...
A Connecticut teacher’s long-sought and hard-fought pregnancy turns into a nightmare when Scottoline (Corrupted, 2015, etc.) unleashes one of her irresistible hooks on her.
Forced to extreme measures because her dreamy husband, Marcus, is sterile, Christine Nilsson has finally gotten pregnant using sperm from anonymous Donor 3319. At the party the staff at Nutmeg Hill Elementary have thrown to celebrate her departure, she gets a look at a serial killer doing his perp walk on TV, and he’s the spitting image of Donor 3319. When the Homestead Bank refuses to confirm or deny the identity of the donor, Christine and Marcus react in dramatically different ways. Marcus is determined to sue Homestead and whomever else is necessary to find out once and for all whether the father of the child he’s awaited so long has killed at least three nurses from Virginia to Pennsylvania. Christine persuades her best friend, Lauren Weingarten, to accompany her to West Chester, Pennsylvania, where Zachary Jeffcoat has been incarcerated, to ask him whether he’s Donor 3319. But Zachary is considerably shrewder and more manipulative than Christine, and before she knows it, she’s helping him instead of vice versa, finding him a raffish lawyer, volunteering to work as an unpaid paralegal to help with his defense, and interviewing the latest victim’s neighbors. As usual, the complications aren’t quite up to the level of the startling hook, and Christine needs more than a bit of luck to dig up the information she seeks. Along the way, she finds out a good many other things she definitely wasn’t looking for.
The fairy-tale ending calls for some convenient coincidences and changes of heart, but Scottoline’s legion of fans will be too relieved to object.Pub Date: April 12, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-250-01013-1
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
A proficient, mounting-stakes actioner that proves Scottoline is just as comfortable with a shrink determined to go to the...
A sociopath targets a suburban Pennsylvania psychiatrist whose success is only the prelude to a series of nightmarish reversals.
It’s true that Dr. Eric Parrish doesn’t have everything. His wife, Caitlin, is divorcing him and being difficult over the joint custody they’ve arranged for their 7-year-old daughter, Hannah, and his latest private patient, 17-year-old Max Jakubowski, seems much more in need of help than his dying grandmother does. But Eric’s colleagues like and admire him—one of them, medical student Kristine Malin, is clearly in hot pursuit—and so does U.S. News and World Report, which is about to announce that the psych unit Eric heads at Havemeyer General Hospital ranks second in the nation. It all goes south with a suddenness that would be shocking outside the pages of Scottoline. Kristine files harassment charges after Eric rejects her come-on. Max phones Eric to say that his grandmother’s died and then takes a powder. Renée Bevilacqua, a girl Max tutors in math and otherwise worships from afar, gets murdered the morning after Eric follows her home, looking in vain for a lead to Max’s whereabouts. The cops haul Eric in as a person of interest, then invade his office and home looking for evidence when he demands they find Max, whom he considers a suicide risk, but won’t say any more about him. The colleagues who so recently toasted Eric lock him out. And that’s all before Max takes five teenagers hostage and announces that he’s going to kill one every 15 minutes before he blows up the King of Prussia Mall. Who can possibly be pulling so many different strings?
A proficient, mounting-stakes actioner that proves Scottoline is just as comfortable with a shrink determined to go to the wall for a troubled teen as she ever was with Bennie Rosato’s all-female law practice (Betrayed, 2014, etc.).Pub Date: April 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-01011-7
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Jan. 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2015
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