Strong characters, an intriguing story, and a brisk pace make for a highly readable legal thriller.
Hawthorne’s debut novel follows a Cape Cod lawyer who defends a mute old woman with memory loss in her trial for a 50-year-old murder in a hostile Southern town.
Olivia St. Clair, 72, is a successful, mute sculptress living the twilight of her life on Cape Cod. One day, however, she’s suddenly arrested and whisked away to a South Carolina town to face murder charges in the death of her wealthy industrialist lover, who died more than 50 years ago in a mysterious factory fire. To defend her, she hires John Bartlemas, a Cape Cod lawyer with little criminal experience. Bartlemas is dealing with his own personal problems, for which he needs money, but what he expects will be a quick guilty plea and probation for St. Clair turns into a desperate fight for her life when the local district attorney unexpectedly asks for the death penalty. Bartlemas finds himself not only struggling with a mute client and her poor memory, but also a prejudiced Southern town that would like nothing better than to see his client dead. Hawthorne has written a sleek, stylish murder mystery with a sharp focus that never loses sight of the main plot even as it takes occasional detours into subplots, each adding to the story’s enjoyment and understanding. Although this is his debut, Hawthorne, a former attorney, avoids the trap of stuffing the book full of everything he knows, and the story moves along briskly. The book perfectly captures the “fish out of water” element felt by Bartlemas and St. Clair in a suspicious town and legal system that views the Northerners as haughty Yankees trying to hoodwink them. Among the small yet memorable cast, Bartlemas is well-defined, but perhaps the most interesting is St. Clair. Questions surround her yet remain unanswered even as the case is tried and the mystery revealed. Another book featuring one or both of them could fill in the gaps—a return most readers would welcome.
Strong characters, an intriguing story, and a brisk pace make for a highly readable legal thriller.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9863346-0-3
Page Count: 203
Publisher: Book Baby
Review Posted Online: Feb. 27, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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