Lescroart cuts back on his trademark sociological sweep to deliver the mid-grade pleasures of the genre: a slow start,...
The author’s latest legal thriller assigns a starring role to Gina Roake, yet another in his ever-expanding corps of regulars from the San Francisco justice system.
Even though she’d just told him she wanted a divorce, and even though he told a traffic cop who tagged him for speeding that he was leaving town so that he wouldn’t kill his wife, nature writer Stuart Gorman can’t understand why the police regard him as their prime suspect after she’s found drowned in their hot tub. It’s true that Stuart is the person who found her the next morning, pulled her out and tried to administer CPR to a corpse already stiff with rigor mortis. And it’s true that Dr. Caryn Dryden’s death makes him a multi-millionaire. But he couldn’t possibly have killed Caryn, he points out, because he was up at Tamarack Lake when she died. In that case, Insp. Sgt. Devin Juhle wants to know, how could a neighbor have identified Stuart’s SUV pulling into his garage at 11:30 p.m. and leaving again an hour later? It must be a mistake, replies the suspect, who doesn’t even want to retain counsel because he’s convinced that the best way to clear himself is to play detective. Not until his old college roommate, California Assemblyman Jedd Conley, persuades him that hiring an attorney is no admission of guilt, does he sign on Gina, a partner of franchise linchpin Dismas Hardy (The Second Chair, 2004, etc.). Gina, a former prosecutor, has never defended a murder case before, and apart from the weight of the evidence, Stuart gives every sign of being the most clueless client in history.
Lescroart cuts back on his trademark sociological sweep to deliver the mid-grade pleasures of the genre: a slow start, realistically repetitious interrogations, some crackling courtroom scenes and a surprise ending that will catch at least half his readers unawares.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2007
ISBN: 0-525-94998-4
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2006
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
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