A lively legal tale boasting an indelible cast and topical social issues.
Some Michigan lawyers help two desperate families fight terrorists and American immigration policy in this seventh installment of a thriller series.
Miguel and Mary Carmen Gonzalez have feared that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents would come for them someday. The Venezuelan immigrants built a life in Lincoln Park, Michigan, on visas that have since expired. After detaining the couple, ICE unexpectedly picks up their American-born children as well. The Gonzalez family’s community hires attorney Zack Blake, but his firm has trouble even finding the kids, locked away in a detention center somewhere, notwithstanding their United States citizenship. In a concurrent plot, naturalized American citizen Canan Izady travels to Syria so her daughter can finally meet her grandmother. The Islamic State group apparently remains in the country, despite stories to the contrary, and armed men abduct the women to hold them for ransom. Zack steps in once again but this time in another capacity—he funds a private security company to launch a rescue mission. Both cases wind up in a U.S. courtroom, with hopes of reuniting Miguel and Mary Carmen’s family as well as lending a hand to a Syrian ally. Series regular Zack, as in previous outings, proves a smart, able lawyer. But he has dependable colleagues: Marshall Mann, who heads the firm’s immigration division, and, to a lesser extent, top associate Amy Fletcher. They’re always ready to argue, even with no judge in sight, but the copious dialogue is more delightfully down-to-earth than legalese. Zack, for example, tries to alleviate a heated exchange: “Let’s lower the temperature a bit.” Bello aptly parallels the dual plots; being taken hostage in war-torn Syria differs little from ICE cramming immigrants into cages with scant food and no air conditioning. He also weaves suspense and some action into the story without derailing the judicial process that the series highlights.
A lively legal tale boasting an indelible cast and topical social issues.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2021
ISBN: 978-1956595031
Page Count: 291
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.
Two killers are on the loose. Can they be stopped?
In this ambitious mystery, the prolific and popular King tells the story of a serial murderer who pledges, in a note to Buckeye City police, to kill “13 innocents and 1 guilty,” in order, we eventually learn, to avenge the death of a man who was framed and convicted for possession of child pornography and then killed in prison. At the same time, the author weaves in the efforts of another would-be murderer, a member of a violently abortion-opposing church who has been stalking a popular feminist author and women’s rights activist on a publicity tour. To tell these twin tales of murders done and intended, King summons some familiar characters, including private investigator Holly Gibney, whom readers may recall from previous novels. Gibney is enlisted to help Buckeye City police detective Izzy Jaynes try to identify and stop the serial killer, who has been murdering random unlucky citizens with chilling efficiency. She’s also been hired as a bodyguard for author and activist Kate McKay and her young assistant. The author succeeds in grabbing the reader’s interest and holding it throughout this page-turning tale of terror, which reads like a big-screen thriller. The action is well paced, the settings are vividly drawn, and King’s choice to focus on the real and deadly dangers of extremist thought is admirable. But the book is hamstrung by cliched characters, hackneyed dialogue (both spoken and internal), and motives that feel both convoluted and overly simplistic. King shines brightest when he gets to the heart of our darkest fears and desires, but here the dangers seem a bit cerebral. In his warning letter to the police, the serial killer wonders if his cryptic rationale to murder will make sense to others, concluding, “It does to me, and that is enough.” Is it enough? In another writer’s work, it might not be, but in King’s skilled hands, it probably is.
Even when King is not at his best, he’s still good.Pub Date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 9781668089330
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
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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