A thoughtful and highly readable legal thriller.
A famous Texas trial lawyer becomes a plaintiff in this third installment of a series.
Cal Connors, the well-known Fort Worth prosecutor of dubious morality, is suing Texas Matters Magazine over a damning profile that he believes will hurt his reputation—as well as bring him unwanted attention from the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The author of the article, veteran reporter Leah Rosen, has recently suffered a setback of her own: the man who tortured and sexually assaulted her (at the request, she believes, of Connors himself in an attempt to quash her story) recently beat the charges against him by outlawyering the state. When Rosen learns that Connors is now suing her in a multimillion-dollar defamation case, she seeks representation from the one attorney who turned Connors down: his longtime rival, Jace Forman. With a history of defending corporations against the suits of individuals, Jace is uniquely suitable for the job, but Connors and his daughter Christine will stop at nothing to retain their family secrets and the fortune that they protect. Things are big in Texas, but the world of the law is small, and the shared history of all those involved will make this a particularly emotional case—one that may leave Jace questioning if he made the right decision when he said no to Connors. With typically taut and colorful prose, Crouch (The Word, 2015, etc.) enlivens even the thorniest legal concepts that propel his intricate plot. Jace is a complicated and not always endearing hero, and through his worldview, the book manages to shine a light on some of the problems with the way cases are litigated in this country. “That’s what’s wrong with the system,” a private investigator reminds Jace early in the novel. “The rich can pay for some hotshot lawyer and walk, while some poor kid from the projects does time for having a few grams of cocaine.” In this latest volume of the Jace Forman series, there are more than enough hotshot lawyers to go around, and even the rich may have a hard time buying the outcomes they desire.
A thoughtful and highly readable legal thriller.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 283
Publisher: Serpentine Books
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.
A woman accused of shooting her husband six times in the face refuses to speak.
"Alicia Berenson was thirty-three years old when she killed her husband. They had been married for seven years. They were both artists—Alicia was a painter, and Gabriel was a well-known fashion photographer." Michaelides' debut is narrated in the voice of psychotherapist Theo Faber, who applies for a job at the institution where Alicia is incarcerated because he's fascinated with her case and believes he will be able to get her to talk. The narration of the increasingly unrealistic events that follow is interwoven with excerpts from Alicia's diary. Ah, yes, the old interwoven diary trick. When you read Alicia's diary you'll conclude the woman could well have been a novelist instead of a painter because it contains page after page of detailed dialogue, scenes, and conversations quite unlike those in any journal you've ever seen. " 'What's the matter?' 'I can't talk about it on the phone, I need to see you.' 'It's just—I'm not sure I can make it up to Cambridge at the minute.' 'I'll come to you. This afternoon. Okay?' Something in Paul's voice made me agree without thinking about it. He sounded desperate. 'Okay. Are you sure you can't tell me about it now?' 'I'll see you later.' Paul hung up." Wouldn't all this appear in a diary as "Paul wouldn't tell me what was wrong"? An even more improbable entry is the one that pins the tail on the killer. While much of the book is clumsy, contrived, and silly, it is while reading passages of the diary that one may actually find oneself laughing out loud.
Amateurish, with a twist savvy readers will see coming from a mile away.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-30169-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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