The current head of SFPD Homicide gets the last word: “This just in. Injustice abounds. Get used to it.”
A former San Francisco DA–turned–defense attorney takes the case of a man he’s convinced is guilty and ends up pursuing it to the ends of the earth.
Maybe Wes Farrell is too accustomed to seeing every criminal defendant as guilty. Maybe he’s just burned out. But he can’t believe that Doug Rush is innocent of killing Paul Riley, who was convicted of raping and murdering Rush's daughter, Dana, 11 years ago. Riley had recently been released from prison after the Exoneration Initiative extracted a confession from someone else, and his father unhesitatingly told inspectors Ken Yamashiro and Eric Waverly that he saw Rush running from the scene after Riley was shot. And even though there’s a certain amount of sympathy for Rush after the two homicide investigators are caught on a bystander’s cellphone camera beating him up during his arrest, the case against him seems so open-and-shut that Farrell can’t believe a word his client says. Soon enough, Rush, who’s jeopardized his million-dollar bail by skipping his preliminary hearing, is found shot to death in the Shakespeare Garden, and the case seems closed for good. But not to Farrell’s partner, Dismas Hardy, or his investigator, ex–Homicide head Abe Glitsky, or even Farrell, who suddenly finds himself fighting for justice for a client he never believed when he was alive. Calling on his trademark eye for the big picture and his sensitivity to changing trends in the perception of the legal system, Lescroart crafts his most searing anatomy of that system since A Certain Justice(1995).
The current head of SFPD Homicide gets the last word: “This just in. Injustice abounds. Get used to it.”Pub Date: Nov. 16, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-9821-7049-3
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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