A generally impressive first outing from a talented writer.
A Texas patent lawyer gets embroiled in a murder trial in this debut novel.
The small city of Marshall, in eastern Texas, has for years been a favored venue for intellectual-property trials, the kind of cases in which the narrator, lawyer James Euchre, has thrived. In the book’s well-paced opening, Euchre is retained for a new patent lawsuit, his client has a violent in-court episode after an adverse ruling by a judge who’s been Euchre’s mentor, and police arrest the client after the judge is murdered. Euchre is the genre’s typically troubled, brooding quasi-underdog, a heavy drinker overshadowed by a famous lawyer father and struggling with his first murder trial. In this area he gets help and a little romance from one of the book’s rare women, a former prosecuting attorney. For welcome glints of humor, there’s Euchre’s investigator, a wisecracking gay woman known as The Leg for her place-kicking prowess. For trademark humor, intellectual-property lawyers lunch at a place called Central Perks, recalling the Friends coffee shop. Hartstone, who has written screenplays for film (Shock and Awe) and TV (The Good Fight), displays a sure hand with the pointed adversarial dialogue that fuels legal thrillers. He builds a nice level of tension in Euchre’s efforts to cope with an abrasive, evasive client and in the lawyer’s legal missteps and local feuds, even combining the two when Euchre goes after a man who once dated his wife. The courtroom scenes have some standout moments, but much of the action is elsewhere, in the Euchre team’s detective work. Through all this, Hartstone weaves two themes, of which one, about small towns and their secrets, was well worn in Harper Lee’s time and doesn’t add much heft here. The other concerns fathers and sons, which Hartstone sustains well through several relevant variations.
A generally impressive first outing from a talented writer.Pub Date: June 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-0-385-54781-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2022
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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
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