A clever, immersive installment in an ongoing series about a determined prosecutor.
Kemanis (Thursday’s List, 2015, etc.) offers a new legal thriller centered on hardworking attorney Dana Hargrove.
A multimillionaire fashion designer is mysteriously gunned down on the first floor of his Manhattan town house. Meanwhile, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office receives a flood of requests for information from Justice Restored, an innocence project dedicated to freeing the wrongfully convicted. Dana doesn’t have time for any of this. She serves as “Bureau Chief of Trial Bureau 90, the busiest bureau in the busiest prosecutor’s office in the country.” What’s more, she’s about to embark on a much-needed vacation with her family to the Jersey shore. When an old acquaintance at Justice Restored subpoenas Dana to appear in court during the dates of her trip, she’s annoyed. But she doesn’t suspect that anything larger is afoot, even if the murder case for which she is being subpoenaed seems an unlikely one for review. A justice-minded rival, attorney Ellen C. Fortier, is in the process of trying to help her already incarcerated con man of a brother—whom she considers innocent—get out of prison. Dana might just prove to be the key to this and the other mysteries swirling around these cases. Ultimately, Dana must find a way to protect her name and discern the truth, to save her career, and to make sure she gets to enjoy her long overdue family holiday. In this third book following the diligent prosecutor, Kemanis, a talented weaver of scene and exposition, keeps the reader engaged with each new twist and bit of evidence. The author manages to compellingly depict many distinct areas of the justice system, from the cops on the street to the lawyers on both sides of the courtroom and the convicted trapped on the other side of the prison bars. There is a lived-in feel to Bureau 90 that sets this work apart from lesser legal thrillers. Kemanis successfully spins a number of subplots simultaneously, and while readers may guess where things will ultimately end up, the how of the tale should keep them turning pages.
A clever, immersive installment in an ongoing series about a determined prosecutor.Pub Date: April 30, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 289
Publisher: Opus Nine Books
Review Posted Online: April 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
