An assured and wholly absorbing legal tale.
In this debut thriller, a lawyer reluctantly joins her first criminal case while trying to stay focused on her family.
As one of the few women at a large Chicago law firm, Maeve Shaw hopes to make partner. But after her second maternity leave, there’s little work available for her, and she struggles to maintain billable hours. Regardless, she steers clear of an imminent pro-bono murder trial. She has an apparent hatred of criminal law, stemming from her troubled childhood with an addict mother and a perpetually angry attorney father. But “the murder team,” wanting a female counselor, requests Maeve. The client is Tammy Sanford, a mom who supposedly strangled her 23-year-old daughter, Kyleigh, a frequent child beauty pageant winner who later became addicted to opioids. Maeve delves into the trial, but a recent discovery about her husband, Patrick, is distracting. He may be having an affair. Though a text message and further evidence aren’t rock solid, they’re certainly suspicious. She’s determined to keep her family together while her boss implies she’ll lose her job if her billables wane. And as she’s sure Tammy is innocent, Maeve and her best friend, Zara Patel, do some investigating of their own. Manning’s novel convincingly mingles Maeve’s personal and professional lives. This character-driven story reveals a woman thriving under intense pressure, even if she occasionally stumbles. As readers only know as much as Maeve does, there’s mystery surrounding both the murder trial and Patrick’s possible adultery. The tale is mostly gloomy, as the mother of two deals with a sexist boss; seems to blame herself, at least partly, for what Patrick may have done; and, via intermittent flashbacks, endures negligent parents. Fortunately, instances of humor offer relief, including scenes involving an odd Brazilian and a webcam failure. The author reinforces her taut narrative with punchy dialogue while each subplot concludes memorably.
An assured and wholly absorbing legal tale. (acknowledgements)Pub Date: June 5, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-73504-931-1
Page Count: 217
Publisher: Bowker
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.
A man walks out of a bar and his life becomes a kaleidoscope of altered states in this science-fiction thriller.
Crouch opens on a family in a warm, resonant domestic moment with three well-developed characters. At home in Chicago’s Logan Square, Jason Dessen dices an onion while his wife, Daniela, sips wine and chats on the phone. Their son, Charlie, an appealing 15-year-old, sketches on a pad. Still, an undertone of regret hovers over the couple, a preoccupation with roads not taken, a theme the book will literally explore, in multifarious ways. To start, both Jason and Daniela abandoned careers that might have soared, Jason as a physicist, Daniela as an artist. When Charlie was born, he suffered a major illness. Jason was forced to abandon promising research to teach undergraduates at a small college. Daniela turned from having gallery shows to teaching private art lessons to middle school students. On this bracing October evening, Jason visits a local bar to pay homage to Ryan Holder, a former college roommate who just received a major award for his work in neuroscience, an honor that rankles Jason, who, Ryan says, gave up on his career. Smarting from the comment, Jason suffers “a sucker punch” as he heads home that leaves him “standing on the precipice.” From behind Jason, a man with a “ghost white” face, “red, pursed lips," and "horrifying eyes” points a gun at Jason and forces him to drive an SUV, following preset navigational directions. At their destination, the abductor forces Jason to strip naked, beats him, then leads him into a vast, abandoned power plant. Here, Jason meets men and women who insist they want to help him. Attempting to escape, Jason opens a door that leads him into a series of dark, strange, yet eerily familiar encounters that sometimes strain credibility, especially in the tale's final moments.
Suspenseful, frightening, and sometimes poignant—provided the reader has a generously willing suspension of disbelief.Pub Date: July 26, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-90422-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 3, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
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