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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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