Another round of editing would make this an excellent legal thriller.
In Blenkush’s mystery, a young, inexperienced lawyer’s seemingly slam-dunk murder case becomes anything but.
Lang Lawton is a junior partner at his uncle’s law firm, where cases have taken a backseat to his uncle’s alcoholism. Adding to Lang’s discomfort is his wife, who demands they leave their small town for something bigger and better. When a public defender drops what seems like an open-and-shut case into the firm’s lap, Lang relishes the opportunity to put his law degree to work. A television news report hints at something that makes Lang doubt his client’s guilt; the client, however, is a sphinxlike character who provides Lang with little help. As Lang continues his investigation, pressure mounts for his client to plead guilty. Lang’s life is in jeopardy when the once-simple case unfurls, implicating a high-profile political race and a Mexican crime boss. Blenkush’s well-written thriller successfully mines a well-worn mystery trope: “the more you know, the less you like it.” Lang, a sympathetic character, maintains stubborn adherence to the attorney’s code of providing a proper defense no matter the circumstances, which seems almost prehistoric in these days of plea bargains, pretrial deals and rushes to judgment. Blenkush keeps the storyline front and center, without meandering into any extraneous subplots that could sap energy from the main narrative. What works against the novel, though, is its exceptionally complex plot and large cast of characters. At times, readers may wish for a scorecard to keep characters and scenarios in order. Far too many cryptic conversations between characters occur, during which little is learned. Meanwhile, the plot hangs suspended in the background, straining to move forward but paused until the verbal jousting is complete. Nonetheless, readers will be guessing the outcome until the book’s satisfying conclusion.
Another round of editing would make this an excellent legal thriller.Pub Date: March 28, 2012
ISBN: 978-1475113556
Page Count: 350
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 22, 2012
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
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.
A series of mounting complications leads to yet another fight to the death between the discarded intelligence agents of Slough House and the morally bankrupt head of MI5.
As Jackson Lamb’s motley crew on Aldersgate Street struggles to cope with the deaths of River Cartwright’s grandfather and mentor, intelligence veteran David Cartwright, and their dim, beloved colleague Min Harper, new troubles are brewing. Diana Taverner, who runs the British Intelligence Service from Regent’s Park, is being blackmailed by former MP Peter Judd to do his bidding. Nothing untoward about that, of course, but this time, Judd’s demands, backed by a compromising tape recording, are more pressing than usual. So Diana reconvenes the Brains Trust—Al Hawke, Avril Potts, Daisy Wessex, and their ex-boss Charles Cornell Stamoran—whose last assignment was to serve as the contact for psychopathic IRA informant Dougie Malone while turning a blind eye to his multiple rapes and murders, which were really none of the Crown’s business. Taverner’s new assignment for the Brains Trust is the assassination of Judd. Since all these developments are filtered through the riotously cynical lens of Herron’s imagination, nothing goes as planned, and when the smoke clears, the fatalities don’t include Judd. Now that Judd knows he has as much reason to fear Taverner as she does to fear him, Lamb offers to broker a peace meeting between them which Slough House computer geek Roddy Ho will keep secret by knocking out 37 security cameras around Taverner’s dwelling. What could possibly go wrong?
The best news of all: The climax leaves the door open to further reports from the hilariously misnamed British Intelligence.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2025
ISBN: 9781641297264
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Soho Crime
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2025
PROFILES
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BOOK TO SCREEN
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