A cunning master class in why you should always trust your lawyer, and what it’ll cost you if you do.
Five years after attorney Patsy Duggan, Seattle’s Irish Brawler, got CEO Jenna Bernstein found not guilty of killing a scientist about to reveal some ugly secrets about her firm, Jenna has to rely on Patsy’s daughter, Keera, when she’s accused of killing an even more highly placed co-worker.
The sad truth about the LINK, a revolutionary “Fountain of Youth” technology that allows noninvasive refashioning of human tissue, is that it doesn’t work. Hours after Erik Wei, a researcher at Ponce de León Restorative Technology, had threatened to go public with this unwelcome news, he was shot dead, and Jenna, the wunderkind boss he reported to, was arrested for his murder. Patsy’s fancy footwork won the day for her back then, but now Patsy, an alcoholic with a long history of health problems, is too old and inconsistent to defend Jenna in a new case, in which she is accused of shooting Sirus Kohl—her CFO, her COO, the owner of 48% of PDRT, and, it turns out, the lover who was about to turn on her. Keera agrees to take it on, though that’s not a decision she makes lightly, since from the time they were in school together, she’s regarded Jenna as a narcissistic liar who certainly could have shot Kohl. The victim’s daughter, PDRT general counsel Adria Kohl, certainly thinks she did, and she’s willing to say whatever it takes to put Jenna away for good this time. With a mountain of circumstantial evidence against Jenna, Keera has her work cut out for her. Dugoni draws freely on a celebrated real-life criminal trial interested readers will identify within the opening pages, but the nerve-racking changes he brings to the trials of the defense are entirely his own.
A cunning master class in why you should always trust your lawyer, and what it’ll cost you if you do.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781662517990
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
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
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.
A frustrated advice columnist takes matters into her own hands.
Before dropping out of MIT during the second semester of her sophomore year, Debbie Mullen had designs on becoming the next Bill Gates. Now, almost 30 years later, the stay-at-home wife and mother of two uses her considerable genius to keep the Mullens’ Hingham, Massachusetts, household functioning “like a well-oiled machine.” In her spare time, Debbie also gardens and shares “the fruits of [her] wisdom” with neighbors via the weekly advice column she writes for Hingham Household, a local “family-oriented” newspaper. Though Debbie is proud of her husband and teen daughters’ accomplishments, her own life sometimes feels a bit empty. As such, she’s both honored and excited when Home Gardening magazine selects her backyard to feature in their next issue. Then, at the last minute, the publication decides to go in a different direction and instead spotlights the roses of her arch rival. Later that day, the editor-in-chief of Hingham Household axes her column because she’d counseled a reader to get a divorce. That evening, Debbie learns that her hard-working husband’s miserly boss refused his promotion request, her brilliant older daughter’s sketchy boyfriend broke her heart, and her athletically gifted younger daughter’s chauvinistic coach cut her from the soccer team for being “chubby.” Enough is enough. Debbie has always given great advice—everybody says so. If certain individuals don’t know what’s best for themselves, maybe it’s her obligation to help them see the light. Increasingly unhinged entries from a “Dear Debbie” drafts folder pepper the briskly paced, meticulously crafted tale, which unfolds courtesy of a pinwheeling first-person narrative. Some of the plot’s myriad twists are more impressive than others, but plucky, puckish Debbie is a nontraditional antihero for the ages.
Gleefully sadistic, gloriously gratifying revenge fiction.Pub Date: Jan. 27, 2026
ISBN: 9781464249624
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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