by Lisa Scottoline ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 14, 2018
Synthetic as all get-out, from the scenes with Mary’s oh-so-Italian family to the unlikely events that bring about the...
It had to happen sooner or later: Philadelphia’s premier, mostly female legal partnership, Rosato and DiNunzio, gets sued for sex discrimination.
Just because Bennie Rosato, Mary DiNunzio, and Judy Carrier have hired John Foxman as an associate doesn’t mean they can’t be sued by Stephen McManus, Michael Battle, and Graham Madden, who claim that they’re not willing to turn the firm any more male than it is. Nick Machiavelli, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, has gotten evidence that John’s felt like an outsider while he’s on the job, and since Machiavelli is already holding a grudge against Mary, that’s good enough for him. Beginning with the accusatory press conference he convenes, things rapidly go from bad to worse. John quits the firm, leaving Judy to carry the ball alone in pressing their little-guy client London Technologies’ case against superrival Home Hacks. Then he gets himself murdered, and Detective Jason Krakoff, of Philadelphia Homicide, quickly ascertains that Judy had been dating John until they broke up, within the hearing of witnesses, an hour or two before the murder. The London Technologies plaintiffs start wavering; the partners can’t turn on the television without seeing Machiavelli crow; a predatory freelance reporter starts dogging the heroines; and Judy looks dead in the water—though Scottoline (Exposed, 2017, etc.) finds little time to develop those last two possibilities because she’s preoccupied with tracing the effects of all this stress on Mary’s late-term pregnancy. Not even a mother’s love could triumph over the dark doings laid out with such professional relish—or so you’d think if you didn’t know the formula, which dictates a sudden late-breaking turn from incredibly bad luck to incredibly good.
Synthetic as all get-out, from the scenes with Mary’s oh-so-Italian family to the unlikely events that bring about the amazingly happy ending. But Scottoline, who obviously knows her readers inside out, hits every mark, and the results are never less than pleasurable, down to the last satisfying twist.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-250-09959-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
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by J.A. Jance ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 2, 2019
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how...
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A convicted killer’s list of five people he wants dead runs the gamut from the wife he’s already had murdered to franchise heroine Ali Reynolds.
Back in the day, women came from all over to consult Santa Clarita fertility specialist Dr. Edward Gilchrist. Many of them left his care happily pregnant, never dreaming that the father of the babies they carried was none other than the physician himself, who donated his own sperm rather than that of the handsome, athletic, disease-free men pictured in his scrapbook. When Alexandra Munsey’s son, Evan, is laid low by the kidney disease he’s inherited from his biological father and she returns to Gilchrist in search of the donor’s medical records, the roof begins to fall in on him. By the time it’s done falling, he’s serving a life sentence in Folsom Prison for commissioning the death of his wife, Dawn, the former nurse and sometime egg donor who’d turned on him. With nothing left to lose, Gilchrist tattoos himself with the initials of five people he blames for his fall: Dawn; Leo Manuel Aurelio, the hit man he’d hired to dispose of her; Kaitlyn Todd, the nurse/receptionist who took Dawn’s place; Alex Munsey, whose search for records upset his apple cart; and Ali Reynolds, the TV reporter who’d helped put Alex in touch with the dozen other women who formed the Progeny Project because their children looked just like hers. No matter that Ali’s been out of both California and the news business for years; Gilchrist and his enablers know that revenge can’t possibly be served too cold. Wonder how far down that list they’ll get before Ali, aided once more by Frigg, the methodical but loose-cannon AI first introduced in Duel to the Death (2018), turns on them?
Proficient but eminently predictable. Amid all the time shifts and embedded backstories, the most surprising feature is how little the boundary-challenged AI, who gets into the case more or less inadvertently, differs from your standard human sidekick with issues.Pub Date: April 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-5101-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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by Lorna Barrett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 13, 2019
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.
Too much free time leads a New Hampshire bookseller into yet another case of murder.
Now that Tricia Miles has Pixie Poe and Mr. Everett practically running her bookstore, Haven’t Got a Clue, she finds herself at loose ends. Her wealthy sister, Angelica, who in the guise of Nigela Ricita has invested heavily in making Stoneham a bookish tourist attraction, is entering the amateur competition for the Great Booktown Bake-Off. So Tricia, who’s recently taken up baking as a hobby, decides to join her and spends a lot of time looking for the perfect cupcake recipe. A visit to another bookstore leaves Tricia witnessing a nasty argument between owner Joyce Widman and next-door neighbor Vera Olson over the trimming of tree branches that hang over Joyce’s yard—also overheard by new town police officer Cindy Pearson. After Tricia accepts Joyce’s offer of some produce from her garden, they find Vera skewered by a pitchfork, and when Police Chief Grant Baker arrives, Joyce is his obvious suspect. Ever since Tricia moved to Stoneham, the homicide rate has skyrocketed (Poisoned Pages, 2018, etc.), and her history with Baker is fraught. She’s also become suspicious about the activities at Pets-A-Plenty, the animal shelter where Vera was a dedicated volunteer. Tricia’s offered her expertise to the board, but president Toby Kingston has been less than welcoming. With nothing but baking on her calendar, Tricia has plenty of time to investigate both the murder and her vague suspicions about the shelter. Plenty of small-town friendships and rivalries emerge in her quest for the truth.
An anodyne visit with Tricia and her friends and enemies hung on a thin mystery.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9848-0272-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2019
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