A remarkable and compelling courtroom drama.
In Ferguson’s legal thriller, a deputy district attorney must navigate an unexpectedly twisty case.
After college sophomore Haylee Branch is found raped and strangled at her friend Jacinta Cantrell’s father’s mansion in a Northern California suburb, the police immediately arrest a young man named Andrew Rodarte. He tells police that he was at the scene of the crime that night, but that he left before Haylee was killed. Enter John Patrick Howland, a deputy district attorney who narrates much of the novel (along with police detective Mark Wade and Haylee’s mother, Marta). Gradually, Rodarte’s story begins to crumble. He admits at trial to killing Haylee, but says it was a tragic outcome of consensual rough sex; nonetheless, he’s found guilty of first-degree murder and gets a sentence of 25 years to life. That should have been the end of the story—an outcome that provides at least some comfort to the victim’s loved ones. But about a decade later, Rodarte files a habeas corpus plea that offers a new account of events that, amazingly, becomes more believable as the cops and the lawyers dig into it. Readers, too, will find the new development to be quite credible and realistic. The book takes readers all the way to the end of the knotty case, showing that justice can be a very messy thing—a concept that gradually reveals itself to be the novel’s overarching theme.
Ferguson presents his readers with a story that begins as a relatively straightforward Law & Order-style procedural, but soon takes the reader on a ride that turns out to be much wilder than your average TV mystery. The author has nearly two decades of experience as an attorney in Southern California, and his deep knowledge of court proceedings is on full display through his novel’s many twists and turns. His trial scenes show his keen eye for detail, but also showcase his ability to take things at a very slow pace when necessary. At another point, Ferguson presents a speech at a parole hearing that’s a masterpiece of tempered emotion and hard-earned wisdom. His greatest strength as a writer, however, is characterization; his players come across as real people caught up in real lives, and readers are likely to find themselves affected by their tribulations. The author treats his main character, Howland, with especially keen sensitivity, showing him to be a good man who’s far more capable than he gives himself credit for. Certainly, the lawyer would make a fine companion for someone—and on the final page, readers get a hint that that might happen. He also shows a distinct talent for shifting readers’ perceptions by taking characters’ stories in unexpected directions. The prose also shows impressive wit at times, as when defense attorney Ted Stauber is described as caught off guard, “like a cowboy on a skateboard”; at another point, the same attorney is said to look “ready to complete the trial by murdering his client.”
A remarkable and compelling courtroom drama.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2023
ISBN: 9798394718434
Page Count: 385
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Nov. 1, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.
Someone is stalking the streets of Lt. Eve Dallas’s New York, intent on bringing new life to sex workers by snuffing out their old ones.
In 2061, prostitutes are called licensed companions, and that’s Leesa Culver’s job description when she’s accosted by a plausible-looking artist who wants to hire her as a model for the night. Before the night is over, she’s been drugged, strangled, costumed, and posed as an uncanny replica of Vermeer’s Girl With a Pearl Earring. The shock of the crime is deepened by the murder the following night of licensed companion Bobby Ren, whose body is discovered at an art gallery entrance costumed and posed as Gainsborough’s Blue Boy. The killer clearly has an obsessive agenda, a rapid-fire timetable, and access to unlimited financial resources that have allowed him to commission expensive custom-made outfits for the victims. This last detail both marks his power and points to the way Dallas, her gazillionaire husband, Roarke, and her sidekick, Det. Delia Peabody, will track him down by methodically narrowing the field of consumers who’ve purchased the costly costumes. After identifying the guilty party two-thirds of the way through the story, they’ll still face an uphill battle convicting a killer with no conscience, no respect for the law, and a budget that would easily cover the means to jump bail, remove his ankle tracker, and hire a private jet to escape to a foreign land with no extradition treaty. Robb keeps it all consistently absorbing by sweating every procedural detail along with her heroine. Only Dallas’ climactic interrogation of her prisoner is a letdown, because it’s perfectly obvious how she’s going to wangle a confession out of him.
High art meets low life in a tale a lot more sympathetic to the latter.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2025
ISBN: 9781250370822
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.
A series of mounting complications leads to yet another fight to the death between the discarded intelligence agents of Slough House and the morally bankrupt head of MI5.
As Jackson Lamb’s motley crew on Aldersgate Street struggles to cope with the deaths of River Cartwright’s grandfather and mentor, intelligence veteran David Cartwright, and their dim, beloved colleague Min Harper, new troubles are brewing. Diana Taverner, who runs the British Intelligence Service from Regent’s Park, is being blackmailed by former MP Peter Judd to do his bidding. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but this time, Judd’s demands, backed by a compromising tape recording, are more pressing than usual. So Diana reconvenes the Brains Trust—Al Hawke, Avril Potts, Daisy Wessex, and their ex-boss Charles Cornell Stamoran—whose last assignment was to serve as the contact for psychopathic IRA informant Dougie Malone while turning a blind eye to his multiple rapes and murders, which were really none of the Crown’s business. Taverner’s new assignment for the Brains Trust is the assassination of Judd. Since all these developments are filtered through the riotously cynical lens of Herron’s imagination, nothing goes as planned, and when the smoke clears, the fatalities don’t include Judd. Now that Judd knows he has as much reason to fear Taverner as she does to fear him, Lamb offers to broker a peace meeting between them which Slough House computer geek Roddy Ho will keep secret by knocking out 37 security cameras around Taverner’s dwelling. What could possibly go wrong?
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781641297264
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
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