Though it could have used a firmer editorial hand and a few more drafts, Kaul’s debut sparkles as brightly as a cubic...
Public defender Kaul’s first novel stars a figure hitherto neglected by legal eagles: the trial consultant whose specialty is picking the right jury.
Nothing in Kate Summerlin’s extensive experience has prepared her for the twists and turns that her two latest cases pose. In one of them, the Urinator, né Rick Wrenshaw, has already admitted to shooting his neighbor Harold Pike six times after the deceased called Rick, who’s on the short side, a garden gnome; Kate’s charge is not to get her client off but to get him life in prison instead of a one-way trip to the death house. In the other, wayward mustard heiress Elsie Stiltson publicly posted an unauthorized photograph of Officer Mike Beckwith, an undercover Kansas City cop who was shot and crippled by drug boss Ulturo Mendiro’s family retainers after his cover was blown; the question is how much responsibility Elsie bore for his injuries. There are lots of complications in store, but the biggest and trickiest is the kidnapping of Kate’s lecherous boss, Dr. Walter Townsend, by a Santa Claus lookalike and two hapless henchmen who are convinced that (1) the person they’ve snatched is actually Townsend’s partner, Kate’s mentor Dr. Farley Greene, and (2) the abduction will put pressure on Kate to blow Beckwith’s case by hook or crook. More challenges for the increasingly beleaguered heroine arrive via a cornucopia of experts, crooks and bystanders, most of them, even the walk-ons, certified zanies, before a happy but thoroughly confusing denouement in a funhouse that provides an apt metaphor for the whole enterprise.
Though it could have used a firmer editorial hand and a few more drafts, Kaul’s debut sparkles as brightly as a cubic zirconium ringed by paste diamonds. More, please, but a little bit less next time.Pub Date: April 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4328-2586-7
Page Count: 286
Publisher: Five Star/Gale Cengage
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2012
Not this time, though. The fact-based mutilations are so outré you just know the answer’s going to be a letdown, and it...
Dead fish and game are only the appetizers for Warden Joe Pickett’s biggest problems in his fourth case.
It’s obvious that cavalier local fisherman Jeff O’Bannon is to blame for the fish floating belly-up in Crazy Woman Creek. But who’s killed the elk, excised the flesh from half his face, and dragged off his enormous carcass? Who’s killed 12 head of Don Hawkins’s cattle in exactly the same way? And has this slaughter of innocents been nothing more than preparation for the remarkably similar murders of ranch hand Tuff Montegue and water-engineering exec Stuart Tanner? Robey Hersig, the County Attorney heading the hastily assembled Northern Wyoming Murder and Mutilations Task Force, lists the likeliest causes: “BIRDS . . . CULTS . . . DISTURBED INDIVIDUALS . . . ARABS . . . GOVERNMENT AGENTS . . . GRIZZLY BEAR . . . ALIENS.” But Joe, skeptical of all these explanations, demands the right to investigate on his own. Even though his mortal enemy, Sheriff Bud Barnum, keeps reminding him he’s only a fish-and-game warden, nobody can deny that Joe’s pulled off some spectacular victories in the past (Winterkill, 2003, etc.).
Not this time, though. The fact-based mutilations are so outré you just know the answer’s going to be a letdown, and it is—even though Joe and his family sweat out suspenseful duels with a self-styled paranormal expert and a trusted neighbor.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-399-15200-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2004
This anxiety-fueled stand-alone from Edgar nominee Gaylin (What Remains of Me, 2016, etc.) takes the gulf that naturally...
After a hit-and-run kills a high school student, the court of public opinion convicts a lonely outcast.
When Jackie Reed hears her 17-year-old son, Wade, sneaking out the night before the SATs, she knows she should stop him; instead, she pops a Xanax and returns to bed. At 4 a.m., Jackie’s 13-year-old, Connor, wakes to find a rain-soaked Wade hiding something in his closet; he considers tattling but promises to keep quiet. These seemingly innocuous decisions come back to haunt Jackie and Connor the next morning. While Officer Pearl Maze was working the graveyard shift at the Havenkill, New York, police department, Amy Nathanson burst through the door claiming to have been carjacked. According to Amy, her screams summoned 17-year-old Liam Miller, whom the thief ran over during his escape. The cops canvass the neighborhood for witnesses, and the Reeds are stunned to realize that Wade matches the suspect’s description. Evidence mounts against him, and the community ostracizes his family, but still Wade refuses to divulge his whereabouts at the time of the accident. The book opens with Wade’s suicide note, then flashes back five days and unfolds from the perspectives of Jackie, Connor, Pearl, and Amy. This narrative shift maximizes suspense by forcing readers to guess at Wade’s thoughts and actions, allowing Gaylin to insightfully explore the crime’s ripple effects.
This anxiety-fueled stand-alone from Edgar nominee Gaylin (What Remains of Me, 2016, etc.) takes the gulf that naturally develops between teenagers and their families and stocks it with sharks.Pub Date: March 6, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-264111-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
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