Duff scores with a winning protagonist and a captivating courtroom procedural.
A rookie small-town lawyer fears a loss when she takes on a popular high school football coach for a client.
Jessica Fischer, 29, is “an inexperienced lawyer just on the brink of competence.” She’s moved to the small town of Ashton, Georgia, where she is the town’s only female lawyer and where “the order of worship was first Jesus, second America, and third the high school football coach, with the second two interchangeable if it were a winning season. It was often a winning season.” The team’s coach, Frank Wishingham III, wants her to defend him after he is served with a lawsuit. The petitioner, Sarah James, claims that Wishingham is the father of her now 16-year-old daughter and wants him to pay past and present child support and cover her health insurance. The coach is a bigot and homophobe (among other things), but he has been advised that having a woman represent him would make for good optics and that Jessica is “a real pistol and would be discrete.” Jessica also tackles the case of Kaitlyn, the pregnant 17-year-old niece of her paralegal, Diane. Kaitlyn’s boyfriend is trying to get into West Point and wants her to get an abortion, which her parents oppose. Meanwhile, the coach is quite adamant about not meeting the daughter in question. Jessica correctly predicts that the two will “have lots of arguments before this ended.” Duff is a humorist and a self-described “recovering lawyer.” Both skills serve her well in this series launch: The likably modest Jessica easily wins the reader’s rooting interest. The portrayal of the coach flirts with stereotype, but he reveals unexpected layers. A love interest, “nice guy” Bobby, a reporter with the local paper, is a little high school cute, but not ickily so. One looks forward to Jessica building her practice and getting to know more about the town and its residents.
Duff scores with a winning protagonist and a captivating courtroom procedural.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2024
ISBN: 9781647427368
Page Count: 256
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: April 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2024
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.
A medical student is assigned an overnight shift to observe a Long Island hospital’s psychiatric ward and help with emergencies. You’d never guess what happens next.
Amy Brenner isn’t even interested in psychiatry, the one medical specialty she’s never considered for her own career. Nor is she interested any more in Cameron Berger, the classmate who ended their relationship so that he could spend more time studying, and she’s not pleased to learn that he’s switched his rotation with another student so he can spend some of the next 13 hours persuading Amy to rekindle their romance. Predictably, Cam will be the least of Amy’s troubles. Apart from Dr. Richard Beck and nurse Ramona Dutton, everyone else on Ward D is much more dangerous, from elderly Mary Cummings, whose knitting needles aren’t plastic but sharpened steel, to William Schoenfeld, who’s stopped taking the medications that were supposed to silence the voices telling him to kill people, to Damon Sawyer, who’s confined in Seclusion One and can’t possibly escape, unless a power outage neutralizes the locks. Most threatening of all is Jade Carpenter, whose close friendship with Amy ended eight years ago when Amy turned her in for what ended up being only one of a whole series of thrill crimes. McFadden measures out the complications, revelations, and betrayals with such an expert hand that readers anxiously trying to figure out whom Amy can trust as her goal shifts from ticking off a toilsome requirement to surviving the night may well end up wondering whom they can trust themselves. And isn’t provoking that kind of paranoia what medical thrillers are all about?
A superior entry in the night-on-the-nightmare-ward genre.Pub Date: March 4, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227271
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
Soapy, suspenseful fun.
A remembered horror plunges a pregnant woman into a waking nightmare.
Tegan Werner, 23, barely recalls her one-night stand with married real estate developer Simon Lamar; she only learns Simon’s name after seeing him on the local news five months later. Simon wants nothing to do with the resulting child Tegan now carries and tells his lawyer to negotiate a nondisclosure agreement. A destitute Tegan is all too happy to trade her silence for cash—until a whiff of Simon’s cologne triggers a memory of him drugging and raping her. Distraught and eight months pregnant, Tegan flees her Lewiston, Maine, apartment and drives north in a blizzard, intending to seek comfort and counsel from her older brother, Dennis; instead, she gets lost and crashes, badly injuring her ankle. Tegan is terrified when hulking stranger Hank Thompson stops and extricates her from the wreck, and becomes even more so when he takes her to his cabin rather than the hospital, citing hazardous road conditions. Her anxiety eases somewhat upon meeting Hank’s wife, Polly—a former nurse who settles Tegan in a basement hospital room originally built for Polly’s now-deceased mother. Polly vows to call 911 as soon as the phones and power return, but when that doesn’t happen, Tegan becomes convinced that Hank is forcing Polly to hold her prisoner. Tegan doesn’t know the half of it. McFadden unspools her twisty tale via a first-person-present narration that alternates between Tegan and Polly, grounding character while elevating tension. Coincidence and frustratingly foolish assumptions fuel the plot, but readers able to suspend disbelief are in for a wild ride. A purposefully ambiguous, forward-flashing prologue hints at future homicide, establishing stakes from the jump.
Soapy, suspenseful fun.Pub Date: Jan. 28, 2025
ISBN: 9781464227325
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
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