If she were real, Winer's heroine would be your hands-down first choice if you got in trouble. But as a lucky and hopefully...
A seasoned criminal defense attorney must draw on her experience to save a teenage client who doesn’t want to be saved.
Over decades, Lee Isaacs has become one of Boulder’s top criminal defense attorneys, but lately she has a lot on her mind besides work. She’s about to turn 60, a number that gives her pause even though decades of taekwondo have kept her fit, if frequently bruised. She worries about her 84-year-old father. She misses her husband, Paul, who died five years ago. So when a woman begs Lee to defend her nephew Jeremy, Lee is initially reluctant. The 16-year-old is accused of—and confessed to—being part of a group of skinheads who stomped to death another young man when they found out he was gay. But as Lee gets information from her determined investigator, Carla, and then eventually from Jeremy, she thinks there may be a way to save Jeremy. Winer (The Furthest City Light, 2012), who was a criminal defense attorney for decades, brings vivid, insider knowledge of all things legal, from lawyers’ black humor to the importance of details to a jury. Unlike many dull legal novels, though, this is filled with witty dialogue, believable characters, and quick pacing (it's a sure bet that the author never bored a jury). Lee is complex, funny, grouchy, and ambitious. It’s just plain fun to hang out with her and her two gay friends; it’s fun to listen as she and her dad talk late at night. And it’s seriously impressive to watch her as a lawyer.
If she were real, Winer's heroine would be your hands-down first choice if you got in trouble. But as a lucky and hopefully law-abiding reader, you have the right to buy her next adventure and remain silent for hours as you speed through the pages.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-61088-228-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bancroft Press
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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