HOOKER AVENUE

A lawyer rescues a victim in distress and gets drawn into the hunt for a serial rapist in this crime novel.

Attorney Jessie Martin pulls over to the side of the road while driving in Poughkeepsie, New York, when she spies a woman lying unconscious in the pouring rain. The woman, Lissie Sexton, survives—she’s a sex worker who was mercilessly beaten by a client she cannot adequately identify. Police detective Ebony Jones—a direct, “just the facts, ma’am” type of investigator—comes to believe that Lissie suffered at the hands of a dangerous serial rapist as similar victims are discovered. Unfortunately, Lissie disappears, and it turns out that she’s represented by Jeremy Kaplan, a shady lawyer, who insists on keeping her whereabouts unknown. Jessie has a tortured history with Jeremy, a despicable man who once tried to destroy her career. Yet she is now offered a job by him. A distraught Jessie mulls her thorny predicament: “Was she really considering crossing over to the dark side? To Jeremy Kaplan? The man who’d almost had her disbarred, who’d cost her the partnership at Curtis and McMann, her engagement to Kyle, and who’d threatened her life and Lily’s? Was she out of her freaking mind?” She ends up accepting the position against her better judgment. Now, Jones leans on Jessie to disclose Lissie’s whereabouts. But Jessie refuses, a decision that only increases the already existing tensions between her and Jones, her former best friend.

In this ambitious sequel, Millman certainly doesn’t skimp on the action—every page seems to reveal a new drama or explain an old one, and the tale’s pace never lags. The main plot is intelligently structured and entirely plausible. While it offers nothing literarily original, the story provides a thoughtful portrayal of the tension between the demands of defense attorneys and the needs of law enforcement. But the tale is written in such a hyperventilated style that it sometimes seems more comic than tragic. The backstory is so complex that it quickly becomes a burden—the book begins with an unwieldy freight of dramas that are difficult to unravel. Jessie is stalked by a psychotic killer; is in a state of perpetual struggle with her ex-fiance; and flounders in her current relationship with Hal Samuels, a district attorney, who has his own set of problems, both professional and personal. As the subplots multiply, the tale becomes increasingly overwrought. But the principal bar to readers’ enjoyment of what could be an entertaining crime drama is the author’s writing, which swings from melodramatic to bland. Consider this internal monologue by Jones: “This is why I became a public servant, she thought. Solving crimes and catching scumbags are cool, but saving a life’s the best.”

An action-packed but uneven thriller.