A finely crafted legal thriller with fully realized characters.
A criminal prosecutor returns as a judge with a target on her back in this fifth installment of a series.
After many years as a prosecutor, Dana Hargrove finds herself on the other side of the bench. It turns out being a trial judge on the New York Supreme Court is just as exciting as being an attorney, particularly when presiding over the cases of two high-visibility defendants. Suzy Spinnaker is a former tech millionaire charged with the murder of her business partner, Connor Davidson. When the jury convicts her of manslaughter, Dana must decide her sentence. Garth Underwood is an orthopedist who sold pills on the side—until two people ended up dead. To make matters stranger, the judge’s younger sister, Cheryl Hargrove, is currently playing a district attorney based on Dana on a hit television show called Plain Justice. The home front doesn’t offer much respite. Dana and her husband, Evan Goodhue—who recently became a law professor—have grown distant from each other in the absence of their children, now away at college. Then a threatening letter arrives at Dana’s office. Soon Evan gets one at school. Someone is trying to influence Dana’s rulings, but who? And how far will they go? Kemanis (Your Pick, 2018, etc.) writes in a precise prose that elucidates the stakes of the cases while delving into the interior lives of her characters: “Allow the evidence or exclude it—either way, Judge Hargrove’s reputation is on the line, just like it is in the Spinnaker case. Suzy again. Not now! She pushes that case to the back of her mind. Sentencing is still a month away.” The author takes time to build her characters—Cheryl and Evan are drawn with the same complexity as Dana—and this gives greater emotional depth to the story than one often finds in legal thrillers. Each book in the series—the earliest of which is set in 1988—jumps six or seven years ahead in Dana’s life: a bold strategy to show how much a lawyer can change over the course of her career. This tale stands well enough alone, but those who read it will want to go back and discover the previous volumes.
A finely crafted legal thriller with fully realized characters.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-9997850-5-8
Page Count: 331
Publisher: Opus Nine Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2020
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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