An absorbing legal thriller that’s both powerful and delightfully nuanced.
In this novella, a freshly minted attorney at a prestigious firm becomes suspicious that his superiors are involved in a fraudulent scheme.
Adam Chauncey is as green as a lawyer can get, occupying the lowest rung on the ladder at Smithson and Dwyer, one of the toniest firms in Chicago. He’s invited to lunch by a senior partner, Bill Evans, a strange request that sparks another: The veteran attorney asks Adam to become a co-executor of a will he’s in charge of and refuses to name the document’s author. Naïve and quick to please a superior, Adam reflexively agrees. Suddenly, when Evans shows signs of cognitive diminishment and steps aside, Adam finds himself in charge of a will that represents a considerable estate, one formerly owned by Percy Landsman. The will is complex and peculiar—Percy has left much of his largesse to his estranged brother, Eric, and mentions his “original birth family.” Adam discovers Percy was the product of an illicit affair between an unknown father and a Latine house maid. With tantalizing suspense, Gilbert follows Adam’s gathering suspicions that something is amiss at his own firm, especially when he finds, with the help of Sally Warren—a paralegal for whom he develops romantic affections—a copy of the will. The duplicate document features contradictory scrawled notes. When he turns to his bosses for clarity, he encounters a “conspiracy of silence” or vague threats.
The author skillfully combines an utterly dark subject matter—the furtive exploitation of the dead—with generally lightsome prose and plenty of comic relief, often conveyed in the flirtatious banter between Adam and Sally. They are outsiders in this world of powerful privilege. With great delicacy, Gilbert explores the ways in which both of them are simultaneously (and contradictorily) repulsed by this cosmos and pine to belong to it. In fact, they’re eventually faced with a stark moral dilemma that compels them to choose either their upwardly mobile ambitions or their sense of decency. It’s intriguing to see Adam, an “innocent, gangly young lawyer,” transform from a callow dupe into a more mature man who reflects with depth on what motivates him. When Sally suggests he might be inspired by a sense of justice, he’s uncertain: “That’s a nice way of putting it, but I’m not sure of my motivation anymore, except that something bothered me from the start—and is still bothering me. I thought I had put it to rest. But I guess I hadn’t. And I don’t like the feeling.” While there’s obviously a potent moral dimension to Gilbert’s tale, this is not the literary expression of some stale lesson drawn from a catechism, or a simplistic parable offered in a professorial spirit of didacticism. The author avoids any hint of tendentious proselytizing or facile reductionism. This is a marvelous novella, piercingly intelligent yet thoroughly unpretentious.
An absorbing legal thriller that’s both powerful and delightfully nuanced.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2023
ISBN: 9781956823219
Page Count: 150
Publisher: Joshua Tree Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 27, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.
Stephanie Plum’s 31st adventure shows that Trenton’s preeminent fugitive-apprehension agent still has plenty of tricks up her sleeve, and needs every one of them.
The current caseload for Stephanie and Lula—the ex-prostitute file clerk at her cousin Vincent Plum’s bail bonds company, who serves as her unflappable sidekick—begins with two “failures to appear.” Eugene Fleck is suspected of being Robin Hoodie, who robs from the rich and, yes, distributes the proceeds to the poor. Racketeer Bruno Jug, who’s missed his court date on charges of tax evasion, is also suspected of drugging and raping a 14-year-old. But neither of these fugitives can hold a candle to Zoran Djordjevic, aka Fang, a self-proclaimed vampire wanted in connection with the gruesome fate of his late wife and three other missing women. As usual, Stephanie’s personal life is just as helter-skelter as her professional life as a bounty hunter. She’s managed to get herself engaged both to Det. Joe Morelli, of the Trenton PD, and Ranger, a former Special Forces agent who runs a private security firm; she thinks she may be pregnant; and she’s willing to marry the father, whichever of her fiances that turns out to be. On top of it all, her nothingburger schoolmate Herbert Slovinski suddenly pops up at one of the funerals she ferries her Grandma Mazur to, hitting on her relentlessly and gilding his importunities by cleaning and painting her shabby apartment and laying new carpet. Luckily, Lula’s on hand to offer cupcakes that stave off the worst disasters, and whenever this hodgepodge threatens to slow down, another FTA appears, or fails to appear.
As usual, Evanovich handles the funny stuff better (much better) than the mystery stuff.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781668003138
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2024
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.
The feds must protect an accused criminal and an orphaned girl.
Maybe you’ve met him before as protagonist of The 6:20 Man (2022): Ex-Army Ranger Travis Devine, who’d had the dubious fortune to tangle with “the girl on the train,” is now assigned by his homeland security boss to protect Danny Glass, who's awaiting trial on multiple RICO charges in Washington state. Devine has what it takes: He “was a closer, snooper, fixer, investigator,” and, when necessary, a killer. These skills are on full display as the deaths of three key witnesses grind justice to a temporary halt. Glass has a 12-year-old niece, Betsy Odom, and each is the other’s only living relative—her parents recently died of an apparent drug overdose. The FBI has temporary guardianship of Betsy, who's a handful. She tells Travis that though she’s not yet 13, she's 28 in “life-shit years.” The financially well-heeled Glass wants to be her legal guardian with an eye to eventual adoption, but what are his real motives? And what happens to her if he's convicted? Meanwhile, Betsy insists that her parents never touched drugs, and she begs Travis to find out how they really died. This becomes part of a mission that oozes danger. The small town of Ricketts has a woman mayor who’s full of charm on the surface, but deeply corrupt and deadly when crossed. She may be linked to a subversive group called "12/24/65," as in 1865, when the Ku Klux Klan beast was born. Blood flows, bombs explode, and people perish, both good guys and not-so-good guys. Readers might ponder why in fiction as well as in life, it sometimes seems necessary for many to die so one may live. And what about the girl on the train? She's not necessary to the plot, but she's a fun addition as she pops in and out of the pages, occasionally leaving notes for Travis. Maybe she still wants him dead.
Fast-moving excitement with a satisfying finish.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781538757901
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2024
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