Captivating characters augment a taut, alluring mystery.
A Michigan litigator tackles a murder case, coming to the aid of a man charged with killing his wife, in this fourth installment of a legal series.
Burr Lafayette has been working on a condemnation case for nearly seven years. The National Park Service has tried condemning all private property on uninhabited South Manitou Island, but Burr’s client, Helen Lockwood, will neither yield nor sell her cherry orchard. Burr has delayed a trial, which is essential since Helen has been missing for the past year. Her husband, Tommy, and her younger sisters, Karen Hansen and Lauren Littlefield, can’t decide if they want Helen legally declared dead so that they can sell the property to the Park Service. Sadly, someone ultimately finds Helen’s body on the island inside a shallow grave, with a bullet hole in her head. Shortly after, cops arrest Tommy, as his pistol was the homicide weapon and witnesses supposedly saw him riding the ferry on the day of her murder. Though criminal law isn’t Burr’s forte, he’s handled murder trials before. Tommy accepts his offer to help, and Burr sets about establishing reasonable doubt by tracking down “a few suspects.” Certainly, there are others who wanted Helen to sell the property and may very well have resorted to homicide. But the lawyer has a long road ahead: Aside from prosecutor Peter Brooks’ damning evidence against Burr’s client, Tommy is withholding pertinent information that makes it harder to defend him. He may even be hiding details that could prove he’s guilty.
Cutter’s recurring protagonist is not without his flaws. In one instance, Burr tries acquiring Helen’s death certificate before the coroner has even performed an autopsy, much to the chagrin of Tommy. But the attorney’s charm outweighs his more deplorable traits, and furthering his appeal are the delightful individuals surrounding him. His law partner, Jacob Wertheim, is an exceptional researcher but appalling in the courtroom while legal assistant Eve McGinty is perpetually assertive. The story’s highlight is Burr’s yellow Lab, Zeke, who’s typically at his side, including when the attorney becomes stranded overnight on South Manitou and later when he tries to get drinks (for the dog, he orders “Water. Straight up”). The mystery is sound, as Tommy may be the killer but the suspects Burr points his finger at have equally credible motives. While the lawyer is unquestionably taking the case seriously, his involvement in several humorous scenes gives the story a welcome lightheartedness. For example, his conversations with Eve via car phone (the tale is set in the 1990s) are comical: “You sound like you’re calling from a tornado,” she says during one of the few times she can hear him. Similarly, the narrative is largely free of violence, notwithstanding the murder. Burr’s courtroom squabbles with Brooks are more akin to bickering than heated arguments, and the protagonist tends to relieve stress by breaking pencils. The final act consists of Tommy’s trial, where Burr shines brightest, managing such obstacles as sustained objections and surprise witnesses with composure and panache.
Captivating characters augment a taut, alluring mystery. (acknowledgments, author bio)Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Mission Point Press
Review Posted Online: May 10, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.
When two women who share a birthday meet, a journalist becomes the subject of her own true-crime mystery.
On their 45th birthdays, Josie Fair and Alix Summer meet at a pub and discover they were born not only on the same day, but in the same hospital. Alix is a successful journalist, and Josie convinces Alix that her story is worth telling: Josie met her husband when she was 13 and he was 40. “I can see that maybe I was being used, that maybe I was even being groomed?” she confesses to Alix. “But that feeling of being powerful, right at the start, when I was still in control. I miss that sometimes. I really do. And what I’d like, more than anything, is to get it back.” From this premise Alix creates a Netflix series, Hi! I’m Your Birthday Twin! which investigates Josie’s life as she reconciles what happened to her as a teen and seeks a new path. With the story unfinished, the narrative unfolds in the present tense, with prose that jingles like song lyrics: “He turns to see if the girl is behind him, and sees her wishy-washy, wavy-wavy, in double vision through the glass windows of the hotel.” Alix is both intrigued and repulsed by Josie, but she initially gives her the benefit of the doubt. After all, Alix’s husband, Nathan, has a drinking problem, and Alix knows what it’s like to be reluctant to leave a bad situation. But Josie seems more interested in being part of Alix’s seemingly glamorous life than she is in fixing her own, and when three people end up dead and Alix’s life is turned upside down, the evidence points to Josie—and turns the TV series into a murder mystery. Transcripts from Alix’s interviews alternate with the narrative, offering increasingly varied perspectives on Josie’s story as told by her neighbors, friends, and family members. With so many versions of events, the ending shatters, leaving readers to decide whose is the truth.
It's hard to read but hard to look away from.Pub Date: Aug. 8, 2023
ISBN: 9781982179007
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 24, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2023
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