An adept and timely courtroom drama.
A judge confronts the rigors of an appellate court in this latest legal thriller in Kemanis’ series.
Dana Hargrove has come up in the world. The post-pandemic world finds Dana as an associate justice of New York City’s appellate division, meaning that she must now debate and compromise with other judges before handing down verdicts. Her current troublesome case is that of Josie Merced, a 17-year-old with Hodgkin’s lymphoma who’s been removed from her aunt’s care by Child Protective Services, who claim that the aunt has failed to provide Josie with lifesaving treatment. The case is tricky, however; it was Josie’s decision to refuse chemotherapy after seeing what it did to her late mother. Further complicating the matter is the fact that Dana’s son, Travis, is now an appellate attorney representing CPS, and his potentially career-making argument is at odds with Dana’s core beliefs. Meanwhile, Dana remains obsessed with a 2-year-old murder case in which both the victim and perpetrator are cops. Accusations of nepotism and coverup haunt the present investigation and trial, and her daughter, Natalie, a psychology grad student, is connected to one of the people involved, further muddying the waters. Can Dana maintain the objectivity that justice requires? Kemanis writes with typical elegance and control, spinning the intricacies of the law into moments of humor and drama, by turns. Here, for instance, she describes Dana’s reaction to being outvoted on the court: “She makes the effort to convince, even with those colleagues who stand firm in wet cement, daring her to watch it dry as she talks herself blue in the face.” The characters, new and old, bring with them a depth of history that lends the novel a gripping feeling of verisimilitude. With this book, Kemanis has brought Dana into roiling legal battles of the present day, dealing with issues of bodily autonomy and police violence that feel particularly urgent and timely. Dana hasn’t softened with age, and fans of the series are sure to enjoy this latest installment.
An adept and timely courtroom drama.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-7378479-0-8
Page Count: 317
Publisher: Opus Nine Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 3, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.
Dexter meets Killing Eve in Wallace’s dark comic thriller debut.
While accepting condolences following her father’s funeral, 30-something narrator Claire receives an email saying that one of her paintings is a finalist for a prize. But her joy is short-circuited the next morning when she learns in a second apologetic note that the initial email had been sent to the wrong Claire. The sender, Lucas Kane, is “terribly, terribly sorry” for his mistake. Claire, torn between her anger and suicidal thoughts, has doubts about his sincerity and stalks him to a London pub, where his fate is sealed: “I stare at Lucas Kane in real life, and within moments I know. He doesn’t look sorry.” She dispatches and buries Lucas in her back garden, but this crime does not go unnoticed. Proud of her meticulous standards as a serial killer, Claire wonders if her grief for her father is making her reckless as she seeks to identify the blackmailer among the members of her weekly bereavement support group. The female serial killer as antihero is a growing subgenre (see Oyinkan Braithwaite’s My Sister, the Serial Killer, 2018), and Wallace’s sociopathic protagonist is a mordantly amusing addition; the tool she uses to interact with ordinary people while hiding her homicidal nature is especially sardonic: “Whenever I’m unsure of how I’m expected to respond, I use a cliché. Even if I’m not sure what it means, even if I use it incorrectly, no one ever seems to mind.” The well-written storyline tackles some tough subjects—dementia, elder abuse, and parental cruelty—but the convoluted plot starts to drag at the halfway point. Given the lack of empathy in Claire’s narration, most of the characters come across as not very likable, and the reader tires of her sneering contempt.
Squeamish readers will find this isn’t their cup of tea.Pub Date: April 16, 2024
ISBN: 9780143136170
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.
The loss of her police officer father and the discovery of an abandoned car in a local lake raise chilling questions regarding a young woman’s family history.
When Hazel Sharp returns to her hometown of Mirror Lake, North Carolina, for her father’s memorial, she and the other townspeople are confronted by a challenging double whammy: As they’re grieving the loss of beloved longtime police officer Detective Perry Holt, a disturbing sight appears in the lake, whose waterline is receding because of an ongoing drought—an old, unidentifiable car, which has likely been lurking there for years. Hazel temporarily leaves her Charlotte-based building-renovation business in the capable hands of her partners and reconnects with her brothers, Caden and Gage; her Uncle Roy; her old fling and neighbor, Nico; and her schoolfriend, Jamie, now a mother and married to Caden. Tiny, relentless suspicions rise to the metaphorical surface along with that waterlogged vehicle: There have been a slew of minor break-ins; two people go missing; and then, a second abandoned car is discovered. The novel digs deeper into Hazel’s family history—her father was a widow when he married Hazel’s mother, who later left the family, absconding with money and jewels—and Miranda, a consummate professional when it comes to exposing the small community tensions that naturally arise when people live in close proximity for generations, exposes revelation after twisty revelation: “Everything mattered disproportionately in a small town. Your success, but also your failure. Everyone knows might as well have been our town motto.”
Small-town claustrophobia and intimacies alike propel this twist-filled psychological thriller.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9781668010440
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Marysue Rucci Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 3, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2024
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