An often entertaining but unevenly executed legal thriller.
After sending a man to death row, a Los Angeles prosecutor has doubts about the evidence in Flores’ novel.
As the story opens in 2023, Linda Sanchez, a tenacious star attorney in the LA district attorney’s office, has just accomplished a feat that puts her in the elite “Nickel Choir”—a handful of attorneys who’ve sent five convicts to death row. The defendant in question, Nicolas Meza, had a history of petty crimes and domestic violence before he was accused and convicted of burning down his own home after a fight with his wife, killing her and their young son. However, Linda can’t sit back and savor her victory, because Jeremy Holder, a slick, smug, Texas-born attorney who specializes in death penalty defenses, is handling Meza’s appeal. As she reviews the case, she knows that she made no mistakes; she would ordinarily be proud of her hard work, but something about the case doesn’t feel right, and it sticks in her mind like “a pebble stuck in [her] shoe.” A key piece of evidence—a blue Los Angeles Dodgers baseball cap that Meza always wore for good luck—wasn’t found until after investigators had gone through the scene several times. Why was it missed at first? Unwilling to let it go, Linda teams up with trusted investigator Raymond “Mon” Santos to quietly poke around, and they quickly discover that the situation is far more complicated than they suspected. Danger quickly escalates as Linda’s car is vandalized, her mother is threatened, and the state bar receives an anonymous complaint that could destroy the lawyer’s career.
Flores, a former trial attorney, professor of criminal justice, and judge who lives in Southern California, portrays the vibrant culture of East LA with humor and warmth, liberally sprinkling the text with Chicano slang and cultural references. Linda is shown to be a driven attorney, a recovering alcoholic, and a supportive daughter and sister who still imagines conversations with her late husband, who died in 2005. Santos, an ex-Marine, is said to be “trilingual”—fluent in “English, Legalese, and Chicano street slang.” The narrative is mostly focused on Linda, but it includes scenes from several other characters’ points of view, including some that address readers directly. These fill in details of Linda’s and the defendant’s backstories but are sometimes a bit odd: Linda’s late spouse, for instance, states, “Oh, by the way, I’m dead.” Other scenes, such as an anecdote from a lawyer whose client Linda prosecuted (“I know I’m not a part of this story, but hear me out”), interrupt the flow while adding little to the story. The prose is sometimes vivid, as when a rookie cop’s tattoo is described as “either a rattler or a fat, menacing worm,” and an old man’s toenails are said to be “trying to escape in ten different directions”; other passages, though, feel awkward, such as “Spike chugged the drink wryly.” The plot is full of surprises that keep the story moving, although some, such as a fortuitous natural disaster, may strain readers’ credibility.
An often entertaining but unevenly executed legal thriller.Pub Date: July 31, 2025
ISBN: 9781804680964
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Pegasus Elliot MacKenzie Publishers Ltd
Review Posted Online: Sept. 2, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.
A woman fears she made a fatal mistake by taking in a blood-soaked tween during a storm.
High winds and torrential rain are forecast for “The Middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire,” making Casey question the structural integrity of her ramshackle rental cabin. Still, she’s loath to seek shelter with her lecherous landlord or her paternalistic neighbor, so instead she just crosses her fingers, gathers some candles, and hopes for the best. Casey is cooking dinner when she notices a light in her shed. She grabs her gun and investigates, only to find a rail-thin girl hiding in the corner under a blanket. She’s clutching a knife with “Eleanor” written on the handle in black marker, and though her clothes are bloody, she appears uninjured. The weather is rapidly worsening, so before she can second-guess herself, former Boston-area teacher Casey invites the girl—whom she judges to be 12 or 13—inside to eat and get warm. A wary but starving Eleanor accepts in exchange for Casey promising not to call the police—a deal Casey comes to regret after the phones go down, the power goes out, and her hostile, sullen guest drops something that’s a big surprise. Meanwhile, in interspersed chapters labeled “Before,” middle-schooler Ella befriends fellow outcast Anton, who helps her endure life in Medford, Massachusetts, with her abusive, neglectful hoarder of a mother. As per her usual, McFadden lulls readers using a seemingly straightforward thriller setup before launching headlong into a series of progressively seismic (and increasingly bonkers) plot twists. The visceral first-person, present-tense narrative alternates perspectives, fostering tension and immediacy while establishing character and engendering empathy. Ella and Anton’s relationship particularly shines, its heartrending authenticity counterbalancing some of the story’s soapier turns.
A grim yet gleefully gratifying tale of lost innocence and found family.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2025
ISBN: 9781464260919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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