A messy but engagingly detailed novel about the secrets hidden beneath a judge’s robe.
In Q’s debut legal thriller, a rising judge encounters corruption among her colleagues.
At 45, Irene Dunne is young for a District Chief Judge of the Court, even if she’s beginning to feel older as a woman. Age and divorce have not slackened her sexual appetite, though the attractive justice is shrewd enough to leave town whenever she’s in the mood to pick up a handsome younger man—or two. It is ironic that, just after the funeral of a famously cruel judge gets Irene thinking about judicial subjectivity, she learns that the FBI is investigating her district court for corruption. Irene is not a suspect—the FBI reveals the investigation to her because of her reputation for integrity—but she still thinks the bureau is barking up the wrong tree. She is soon proven wrong when a peer judge is indicted and commits suicide in his chambers. Horrified, Irene takes it upon herself to try to root out the rot at the center of his district, even if it means ruffling the feathers of friends and mentors. She finds an unexpected ally—and perhaps something more—in Justice T.H. Clark, the district’s resident rake. But just how far will Irene go to clean up the courts, especially if it means she gets taken out with the rest of the garbage? Q clearly knows the ins and outs of a judge’s chambers, bringing the insular, deferential culture of justices to surprising life. Part of the demystification is Irene’s realization that her colleagues are not infallible. “How could this type of person be thrust into a position of trust and allowed to decide the fate of other human beings, often the very lives of others?” she wonders about one justice nicknamed Judge Ghoul. The book features a few too many chapter-long digressions and monologues, and it’s not nearly as sexy as the opening chapter implies, but fans of legal thrillers will find much here to chew on.
A messy but engagingly detailed novel about the secrets hidden beneath a judge’s robe.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2025
ISBN: 9798998516108
Page Count: 375
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”
Idyllic Catalina Island turns out to be just as crime infested as the rest of Los Angeles County in the latest series launch by the creator of Harry Bosch, Renée Ballard, and the Lincoln Lawyer.
Det. Sgt. Stilwell has been bounced off the county homicide squad and rusticized to Catalina, where the exclusive Black Marlin Club won’t admit even four-term Avalon Mayor Doug Allen to full membership and the most serious infraction seems to be the killing and cutting up of a buffalo, presumably by Henry Gaston, who operates Island Mystery Tours when he’s not threatening endangered species. All that changes with the discovery of a body sunk in the surrounding waters. The corpse, most recognizable by its streak of purple hair, is that of Leigh-Anne Moss, a Black Marlin server recently fired for fraternizing with members and guests she sees as potential sugar daddies. Stilwell is sufficiently invested in her murder to compete vigorously over jurisdiction with Rex Ahearn, the LA County homicide detective who kept his job when Stilwell lost his. Their rivalry, fueled by mutual contempt, is only the first hint that Stilwell will end up fighting his counterparts in law enforcement and local government at least as hard as he fights crooks like hit man Merris Spivak and Oscar “Baby Head” Terranova, Henry’s boss, who comes under sharper scrutiny when Henry disappears and ends up dead himself. Connelly handles his hero’s obligatory romance with assistant harbormaster Tash Dano and his increasingly wary alliance with assistant D.A. Monika Juarez with equal professionalism, and if the wrap-up leaves some loose ends dangling, well, that’s what franchises are for.
As the prosecutor sadly observes: “All this because of a dead buffalo.”Pub Date: May 20, 2025
ISBN: 9780316588485
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2025
More like a con than a truly satisfying psychological mystery.
What should be a rare horror—a woman gone missing—becomes a pattern in Kubica's latest thriller.
One night, a young mother goes for a run. She never comes home. A few weeks later, the body of Meredith, another missing woman, is found with a self-inflicted knife wound; the only clue about the fate of her still-missing 6-year-old daughter, Delilah, is a note that reads, "You’ll never find her. Don’t even try." Eleven years later, a girl escapes from a basement where she’s been held captive and severely abused; she reports that she is Delilah. Kubica alternates between chapters in the present narrated by Delilah’s younger brother, Leo, now 15 and resentful of the hold Delilah’s disappearance and Meredith’s death have had on his father, and chapters from 11 years earlier, narrated by Meredith and her neighbor Kate. Meredith begins receiving texts that threaten to expose her and tear her life apart; she struggles to keep them, and her anxiety, from her family as she goes through the motions of teaching yoga and working as a doula. One client in particular worries her; Meredith fears her husband might be abusing her, and she's also unhappy with the way the woman’s obstetrician treats her. So this novel is both a mystery about what led to Meredith’s death and Delilah’s imprisonment and the story of what Delilah's return might mean to her family and all their well-meaning neighbors. Someone is not who they seem; someone has been keeping secrets for 11 long years. The chapters complement one another like a patchwork quilt, slowly revealing the rotten heart of a murderer amid a number of misdirections. The main problem: As it becomes clear whodunit, there’s no true groundwork laid for us to believe that this person would behave at all the way they do.
More like a con than a truly satisfying psychological mystery.Pub Date: May 18, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-778-38944-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Park Row Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2021
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