Lescroart plots so cleverly that he has you believing his split-level thriller is really a single foreshortened novel. The...
Defense attorney Dismas Hardy’s long streak of getting along with everyone on both sides of the courtroom ends with a whimper when his friend Wes Farrell loses his campaign for re-election as district attorney of San Francisco to a rising star who wastes no time changing the rules.
Trouble begins quietly enough, with the sudden, unprecedented absence of Hardy’s secretary, Phyllis McGowan, from the office. When she returns a few days later, she assures Hardy (Poison, 2018, etc.) that everything’s fine. But her arrest as accessory to the murder of thief/extortionist/pimp Hector Valdez says different. It turns out that (1) Phyllis has a younger brother, Adam, she’s never mentioned (small wonder, since until six weeks ago he was doing time for armed robbery); (2) she’s been serving as one of the conductors on a modern-day Underground Railroad that helps shelter undocumented people from U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement; and (3) Celia Montoya, one of the most recent clients she sheltered from both Hector and the feds, has been arrested for killing Hector. Hardy could have sprung Phyllis from jail in an hour while Farrell was in the office, but new D.A. Ron Jameson, stung by Hardy’s support of Farrell, is determined to give him a hard time at every turn, and it isn’t long before Hardy, announcing, “I want him stopped,” is returning his salvos in kind. It would be bad enough if Jameson were only hard-nosed and hostile, but he’s hiding a secret that would be death to his political aspirations: Both he and his wife, Kate, have committed murder. Since Hardy is cherishing some long-standing secrets of his own, the story becomes a race to see which of them can pry the other’s skeletons out of the closet first in order to pre-emptively neutralize any counterattack.
Lescroart plots so cleverly that he has you believing his split-level thriller is really a single foreshortened novel. The perfect read for those who agree that “it’s only trouble if somebody’s shooting at you.”Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1573-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Oct. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2018
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
A tepid follow-up to The Camel Club (2005), with few surprises.
Helped by a beautiful grifter, the “Camel Club”—the four-man band of conspiracy theorists—returns to battle a threat to national security.
Annabelle Conroy is con-artist extraordinaire; Jerry Bagger, mobster and mark; and Roger Seagraves, master assassin. All come straight from central casting. Seagraves is killing high-level government officials, and Conroy is putting together the con of the century, with Bagger as the target. The mysterious death of a rare-books expert at the Library of Congress launches the story, which splits off at first into two different plotlines. In one, Conroy and her team work their way up to their major score. In the other, the Camel Club investigates the mysterious death of a close friend. Things are slightly more exciting in Conroy’s world. She’s assembling her team, eager to settle an old score by taking down Atlantic City’s most notorious and ruthless casino owner. After a series of capers out west to build their bankroll, the team heads back east. There’s little drama Players act out their part; marks fall. The big score comes off without a hitch. The two plots intersect halfway through. Annabelle arrives in D.C., thanks to an awkward development, along with a new piece of unfinished business. Seagraves and the Camel Club are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game, and Annabelle Conroy is the special guest star. The merged stories reach a predictable conclusion. An obvious conflict remains unresolved for much of the way, setting up the next chapter in the saga.
A tepid follow-up to The Camel Club (2005), with few surprises.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2006
ISBN: 0-446-53109-X
Page Count: 448
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2006
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
