A topical, lively legal thriller.
Crouch (Cried For No One, 2013) returns to the high-stakes world of Texas civil litigation with the next Jace Forman thriller.
When a grieving couple attempting to bury their veteran daughter is confronted by a group of fanatical Christian protestors outside her funeral, they go to well-respected Fort Worth attorney Jace Forman for justice. In nearby Austin, dogged legal reporter Leah Rosen, hot on the trail of a star lawyer who may be using false evidence to win cases, finds a dead fish in her bed, the word “STOP” written in lipstick across her pillowcase. For help in their respective investigations, both Forman and Rosen turn to virtuoso PI Jackie McLaughlin to get them the answers they need. Looming over everything is Forman’s rival, Cal Connors, the subject of Rosen’s article and a man who doesn’t feel the need to play by the rules when the system is stacked against his clients. Last assembled in Crouch’s previous novel, the cast is back for an even greater task: challenging the limitations of speech, religion and the First Amendment. Crouch is a fine practitioner of the courtroom drama. He knows just how to bring a legal case to life without having to dress it up or dumb it down. His prose is precise and clear, pushing readers forward with an understated elegance. Characters—heroes, villains and those in between—are fully formed creatures with personal hungers, demons and large helpings of Texas personality. Since pacing is right on point, the pages all but turn themselves as each scene builds on the next, working outward in a spiderweb of connections, complications and coincidences. The story gets bigger as it goes along, with Crouch keeping it skillfully managed the whole way. Inspired by news headlines, this timely novel illustrates how even the simplest seeming disputes are complex in the eyes of the law. Serving justice, it turns out, sometimes requires a creative strategy.
A topical, lively legal thriller.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-0692369005
Page Count: -
Publisher: Serpentine Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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