Although Mark is either distracted or benighted in his third case, Raimondo (Dante’s Poison, 2014, etc.) has invested him...
A battered wife finds an ally in a visually challenged expert witness.
Dr. Dante Mark Angelotti has a full plate already in adjusting to life as a practicing psychologist who’s become nearly blind. But now he’s facing change on all sides: a new apartment, a new boss, a new office, a new custody battle over his young son, and a new case. The newly elected state’s attorney wants him to evaluate an evaluation by Bradley Stephens, a fellow psychologist who was killed in a hit-and-run accident days before he could testify. Modern technology allows Mark to hear and absorb his colleague’s documents while he forms his own opinion about what turns out to be far from an open-and-shut case. The defendant, Rachel Lazarus, has confessed to murdering her professor husband, brutally emasculating his corpse, and wheeling him across the University of Chicago’s South Side campus. But she suffered years of his abuse, and though Mark has mixed feeling about Battered Woman Syndrome as a justification for homicide, he has his own reasons for knowing that post-traumatic stress disorder is all too real. Even so, there’s something uncharacteristic about Stephens’ final evaluation. To add to the complications, the defense attorney is Mark’s estranged girlfriend. Worst of all, the prosecutor, Assistant State’s Attorney Tony Di Marco, suddenly turns on Mark during trial and treats him as a hostile witness. When Di Marco’s young assistant approaches Mark with a confession of her own, he finally begins to wonder if he was set up. While he’s following several twists in a search for Lazarus’ missing daughter, he uncovers a detail about a tragedy from his past and finds a flicker of hope for a better future.
Although Mark is either distracted or benighted in his third case, Raimondo (Dante’s Poison, 2014, etc.) has invested him with all his customary wit, courage, and honesty.Pub Date: Aug. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-63388-042-9
Page Count: 290
Publisher: Seventh Street Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
Yes, it’s formula. Yes, it’s not as gritty an exercise in swamp mayhem as Hiaasen, Buchanan, or Crews might turn in. But,...
“I started dreaming of getting rich, which, in Florida anyway, can lead to serious trouble”: another blockbuster in the making from Grisham (Rogue Lawyer, 2015, etc.), the ascended master of the legal procedural.
If justice is blind, it is also served, in theory, by incorruptible servants. Emphasize “in theory,” for as Grisham’s latest opens, judicial investigator Lacy Stoltz is confronted with the unpleasant possibility that a highly regarded judge may be on the take. The charge comes, discreetly, from a former lawyer–turned-jailbird-turned-lawyer again, who spins out a seemingly improbable tale of racketeering that weds the best elements of Gulf Coast society with the worst, from the brilliant legal minds of Tallahassee to some very unpleasant lads once styled as the Catfish Mafia, now reborn in an alt-version, the Coast Mafia. Lacy’s brief is to find out just how rotten the rotten judge is—and the answer is plenty. Naturally, this knowledge is not acquired without cost; the body count rises, bad things happen to good people, and for a time, at least, the villains get away with murder and more. Grisham has never been strong on characterization: Lacy, we learn, is content to be single, “to live alone, to sleep in the center of the bed, to clean up only after herself,” and so forth, but beyond that the reader doesn’t get much sense of what drives her to put herself in the way of flying bullets and sneering counsel: “His associate was Ian Archer, an unsmiling sort who refused to shake hands with anyone and reeked of surliness.” In laid-back Florida? Indeed, and in Grisham’s busy hands, a lot of players come and go, some fated to sleep with the manatees.
Yes, it’s formula. Yes, it’s not as gritty an exercise in swamp mayhem as Hiaasen, Buchanan, or Crews might turn in. But, like eating a junk burger, even though you probably shouldn’t, it’s plenty satisfying.Pub Date: Oct. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-385-54119-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Oct. 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.
A wealthy woman with a handsome husband is preyed on by a ruthless con artist.
One day at the gym, Amber Patterson drops the magazine she’s reading between her exercise bike and that of the woman who happens to be beside her, Daphne Parrish. As she bends to pick it up, Daphne notices that it’s the publication of a cystic fibrosis foundation. What a coincidence—Daphne’s sister died of cystic fibrosis, and, why, so did Amber’s! “Slowing her pace, Amber wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. It took a lot of acting skills to cry about a sister who never existed.” Step one complete. “All she needed from Daphne was everything.” Everything, in this case, consists of Daphne’s outlandishly wealthy and blisteringly hot husband, Jackson, and all the real estate that comes with him; Daphne can definitely keep her two whiny brats. Amber hates children. But once she finds out that Daphne’s failure to give Jackson a male heir is the main source of tension in the marriage, she sees exactly how to make this work. Amber’s constant, spiteful inner monologue as she plays up to Daphne is the best thing about this book. For example, as Daphne talks about the many miseries her sister Julie went through before her death, Amber is thinking, “At least Julie had grown up in a nice house with money and parents who cared about her. Okay, she was sick and then she died. So what? A lot of people were sick. A lot of people died.…How about Amber and what she’d gone through?” Meanwhile, poor, stupid Daphne is so caught up in the joy of finally having a friend, she seems to be handing Jackson to her on a platter. Constantine’s debut novel is the work of two sisters in collaboration, and these ladies definitely know the formula.
A Gone Girl–esque confection with villainy and melodrama galore.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-266757-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2017
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