Gripping legal suspenser by the author of last year's hallucinatory The Firm—and an even stronger performance than that still-current bestseller. Grisham also strikes gold with public awareness of the furor over the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Thomas. Where The Firm clamped into the reader's greed for the perks of a supersuccessful young lawyer in an almost fantasy law firm, Grisham's second is a tale that baits its own hooks with the lures of All the President's Men. That much of what happens here happens regularly in suspense novels (sudden stranglings and murders) in no way lessens the novel's intensity and feeling of freshness—a freshness that springs in both novels from Grisham's focus on top law students, cloistered brains who find themselves raw beginners in the real world but afloat on cash. Here, second-year law student at Tulane Derby Shaw sets out to solve the seemingly motiveless simultaneous murders of two largely liberal Supreme Court judges who were killed two hours apart on the same night. A lone assassin or a conspiracy? Clearly someone wants the conservative Republican president, a grandfatherly nerd mainly interested in his golf game, to pack the already conservative Court. Darby reviews hundreds of the Court's upcoming cases and sees only one that fulfills the breadth of evil needed to account for such desperate measures as double murder: a multibillion-dollar oil venture in Louisiana that will kilt off the state's beloved but endangered brown pelican. Derby's brief on this "fictional" case finds its way to the White House, the FBI, and the CIA. Then Darby's lover, her constitutional-law professor, to whom she has shown the brief, is blown up in a car-bomb explosion meant also to have killed Darby. The story's vitality springs from Grisham's relentless enlivening of Derby's fears as she flees about the country in a closing web of killers while trying to help Washington Post reporter Gray Grantham get the goods on the baddies in a newsbreak bigger than Watergate. Must entertainment for legal folk. Should outsell The Firm.
Pub Date: March 4, 1992
ISBN: 0-385-42198-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1992
SEEN & HEARD
A smart, suspenseful tale about love, betrayal, and the illusion of happiness.
A middle-aged British woman invites an old friend for an open-ended visit, wreaking chaos in her own family, in this twisty domestic thriller.
Melanie Harrison is startled to receive an email from Abigail Curtiz, a woman she lost touch with nearly two decades earlier. Abi’s email explains that she is in the midst of an ugly divorce, and she would like to reconnect. Melanie and Abi have led very different lives in the years since they lost touch. Melanie quit school to raise the baby she had at age 19, while Abi found professional success and moved to California with her handsome, wealthy husband. Abi’s Hollywood life was enviable until she caught her husband cheating with a younger woman. When Melanie learns the circumstances of the divorce, she feels compelled to provide sanctuary for Abi and invites her for a visit. Melanie is proud of the turns her own life has taken and looks forward to showing off her good luck to her friend. She's married to a wonderful man named Ben, with whom she's had two adorable children. Unfortunately, once Abi moves her suitcase into the Harrisons’ spare room, Melanie’s picture-perfect life begins to disintegrate. Ben is suddenly irritable all the time, and Melanie finds herself falling under Abi’s indescribable spell, drinking, gossiping, and shirking her responsibilities. As Abi’s stay draws on, secrets begin to emerge in the Harrison house and tensions rise until so much of Melanie’s life begins to feel precarious. Melanie’s attempts to impress her old friend could end up destroying the life she has worked so hard to create. Told from multiple perspectives in witty and often conversational prose, the story starts jauntily enough but becomes increasingly ominous. The author builds suspense by exposing the holes in ostensibly strong character relationships, creating an addictive page-turner as readers wait for the other shoe to drop over and again. Although many plot points could be deemed predictable, there are enough surprises to keep readers aggressively engaged. Full of details about life in the suburbs of London, the story is full of emotional insights about parenting, marriage, and personal legacies.
A smart, suspenseful tale about love, betrayal, and the illusion of happiness.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-7783-6921-9
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Harlequin MIRA
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2018
British journalist Logan’s first foray into crime fiction is an adrenaline-fueled page-turner that explores the fragility of...
A spur-of-the-moment detour leads to disaster in this psychological thriller debut.
Joseph Lynch and his 4-year-old son, William, are navigating North London traffic when William spots his mother’s car exiting the highway. William wants to surprise Melissa, so they follow her to the Premier Inn, where Joe assumes she’s meeting a client; instead, they find Mel in the hotel bar, arguing with her best friend’s husband, tech millionaire Ben Delaney. Mel flees before Joe can flag her down, so he confronts Ben, who denies having seen Mel. The ensuing scuffle ends with Ben’s striking his head on the parking garage floor and losing consciousness. Joe takes William home and then returns to the hotel, but Ben and his vehicle are gone. Also missing is Joe’s phone, which he lost in the fray. Later that night, Joe interrogates Mel, who insists that the rendezvous was business-related. Joe initially believes her, but it’s not long until he realizes that his wife is lying—and that thanks to her vengeful lover, his marriage isn’t the only thing in jeopardy. Logan writes viscerally about the emotional devastation wrought by marital infidelity. Joe’s heartbreak and desolation are palpable, the tale cunningly exploits the paranoia that springs from fractured trust, and although Logan fails to fully earn his twisting plot’s final turn, the ending still packs a punch.
British journalist Logan’s first foray into crime fiction is an adrenaline-fueled page-turner that explores the fragility of domestic bliss.Pub Date: Sept. 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-18226-5
Page Count: 432
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 17, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
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