A timely and well-told legal mystery.
A cynical defense lawyer takes a case with the potential to alter his views of the justice system in Allan’s debut legal thriller.
Mason Mitchell has made peace with his livelihood. The criminal defense attorney represents Milwaukee’s worst: drunk drivers, drug dealers, armed robbers, and gang members (“The majority of Mason’s clients were guilty, the kind of people you would call criminals, and he was one hundred percent okay with that. It came with the territory, and he suffered no pangs of conscience”). Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mason is divorced, increasingly estranged from his daughter, lives alone, works long hours, and drinks a lot of vodka. Not all of Mason’s clients are clear-cut villains, however; take Lori Wells, a steakhouse waitress charged with attempted homicide for stabbing her husband. Lori has no memory of doing it, nor can she imagine why she ever would. Then there’s the higher-profile case of Michael Key, a Black high school football coach accused of killing his white wife. The public has already made up its mind regarding Key’s guilt, but, for once, Mason believes his client is truly innocent. The question is whether Mason is a good enough lawyer to keep the justice system from ripping either client to shreds. Allan’s incisive prose adeptly threads the needle between sincerity and satire, as when Mason drunkenly complains about his job to a disinterested bartender: “ ‘Most of the lawyers you see in here don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone they represent. Guilty, innocent, they could care less. They aren’t in the law business, they’re in the processing business.’ Mason was rolling downhill, and didn’t notice his bartender glance around for a plausible excuse to walk away.” The characters are compelling and the cases are intricate, inviting readers to quickly lose themselves in the procedural details. One hopes there are further Mason Mitchell thrillers on the docket.
A timely and well-told legal mystery.Pub Date: May 20, 2023
ISBN: 9798988241003
Page Count: 387
Publisher: Stretched Studio
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.
Character assassination reigns supreme, if not uncontested, in a Long Island suburb.
April Masterson loves her husband, corporate attorney Elliott; their 7-year-old, Bobby; and her YouTube channel, “April’s Sweet Secrets.” What she doesn’t love is whoever’s texting her warnings about how Bobby isn’t really in their backyard while she’s busy filming her videos or withering critiques of her baking show or veiled accusations about her past and threats about her present. Her best friend, former prosecutor Julie Bressler, may be bossy and opinionated, but surely she’d never turn on April this way. Who else might know enough to send April goodies like a picture of her kissing Mark Tanner, Bobby’s soccer coach? Though April struggles to get Elliot to take her ordeal seriously, even when she shows up at his office for a lunch date, he’s protected by his receptionist, Brianna Anderson, whose attachment to her boss goes far beyond loyalty. Then Julie turns on her; Maria Cooper, her friendly new next-door neighbor, turns on her; and in the most mind-boggling scene, Doris Kirkland, April’s mother, whose dementia has brought her to a nursing home, turns on her. McFadden releases an escalating series of toxins so deftly into the suburban atmosphere that it’s practically an anticlimax when someone gets killed and April instantly becomes the prime suspect. But that’s only a setup for the tale’s boldest move: switching its narrator from April to a fair-weather friend who frames the whole nightmare in dramatically different terms. As a special gift to her savviest fans, the author throws in an even more jolting epilogue that’s as hard to forget as it is to believe.
Recommended reading for every paranoid suburbanite who’s considering a move to the city, or to the Arctic wilds.Pub Date: March 3, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249600
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
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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