A cunning master class in why you should always trust your lawyer, and what it’ll cost you if you do.
Five years after attorney Patsy Duggan, Seattle’s Irish Brawler, got CEO Jenna Bernstein found not guilty of killing a scientist about to reveal some ugly secrets about her firm, Jenna has to rely on Patsy’s daughter, Keera, when she’s accused of killing an even more highly placed co-worker.
The sad truth about the LINK, a revolutionary “Fountain of Youth” technology that allows noninvasive refashioning of human tissue, is that it doesn’t work. Hours after Erik Wei, a researcher at Ponce de León Restorative Technology, had threatened to go public with this unwelcome news, he was shot dead, and Jenna, the wunderkind boss he reported to, was arrested for his murder. Patsy’s fancy footwork won the day for her back then, but now Patsy, an alcoholic with a long history of health problems, is too old and inconsistent to defend Jenna in a new case, in which she is accused of shooting Sirus Kohl—her CFO, her COO, the owner of 48% of PDRT, and, it turns out, the lover who was about to turn on her. Keera agrees to take it on, though that’s not a decision she makes lightly, since from the time they were in school together, she’s regarded Jenna as a narcissistic liar who certainly could have shot Kohl. The victim’s daughter, PDRT general counsel Adria Kohl, certainly thinks she did, and she’s willing to say whatever it takes to put Jenna away for good this time. With a mountain of circumstantial evidence against Jenna, Keera has her work cut out for her. Dugoni draws freely on a celebrated real-life criminal trial interested readers will identify within the opening pages, but the nerve-racking changes he brings to the trials of the defense are entirely his own.
A cunning master class in why you should always trust your lawyer, and what it’ll cost you if you do.Pub Date: Oct. 22, 2024
ISBN: 9781662517990
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Thomas & Mercer
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.
A routine break-in at the home of Sûreté homicide chief Armand Gamache leads slowly but surely to the revelation of a potentially calamitous threat to all Québec.
At first it seems as if nothing at all triggered the burglar alarm at Gamache’s home in Three Pines; it was literally a false alarm. It’s not till he receives a package containing his summer jacket that Gamache realizes someone really did get into his house, choosing to steal exactly this one item and return it with a cryptic note referring to “some malady…water” and “Angelica stems.” Having already refused to meet with Jeanne Caron, chief of staff to Marcus Lauzon, a powerful politician who’s already taken vengeance on Gamache and his family for not expunging his child’s criminal record, Gamache now agrees to meet with Charles Langlois, a marine biologist with ties to Caron who confesses to a leading role in stealing Gamache’s jacket. Their meeting ends inconclusively for Gamache, who’s convinced that Langlois is hiding something weighty, and all too conclusively for Langlois, who’s killed by a hit-and-run driver as he leaves. The news that Langlois had been investigating a water supply near the abbey of Saint-Gilbert-Entre-les-Loups sends Gamache scurrying off to the abbey, where the plot steadily thickens until he’s led to ask how “an old recipe for Chartreuse” can possibly be connected to “a terrorist plot to poison Québec’s drinking water.” That’s a great question, and answering it will take the second half of this story, which spins ever more intricate connections among leading players that become deeply unsettling.
One of those rare triple-deckers that’s actually worth every page, every complication, every bead of sweat.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2024
ISBN: 9781250328137
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: July 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2024
Expert, but unsurprising.
The death of an old friend who was more than a friend sends Dr. Kay Scarpetta down her latest rabbit hole.
If every body tells a story, the corpse of 7-year-old Luna Briley sings the blues. On top of the many signs of ongoing physical abuse, there’s the fatal gunshot wound to her head. Ryder and Piper Briley, the wealthy and powerful parents who didn’t call the police until after their daughter died, insist that Luna’s death was an accident, or maybe a suicide. Scarpetta doesn’t think so, and her refusal to release the body to the Brileys’ hand-picked mortician moves them to legal action against her as Virginia’s chief medical examiner. You’d think it would be a relief to put this case aside for another when Scarpetta’s niece, Secret Service agent Lucy Farinelli, calls her and ferries her by helicopter to an abandoned Oz theme park owned by Ryder Briley, but this one’s even more heartbreaking. Scarpetta is there to examine the body of astrophysicist Sal Giordano, her close friend and former lover, who was evidently kidnapped, held in captivity for several hours, and tossed out of an unidentified aircraft. The leading suspects are the Brileys; Carrie Grethen, Lucy’s sociopathic ex-lover, with whom Scarpetta has repeatedly tangled in the past; and the UFO that dumped Giordano’s body without leaving the usual traces for air-traffic technologies to pick up. The multiple rounds of physical examinations Scarpetta conducts on both victims are every bit as meticulous and gripping as fans would expect; the killer’s identity is neither surprising nor interesting, but Cornwell juggles her trademark forensics, and the paranormal hints she’s become increasingly invested in, more dexterously than usual.
Expert, but unsurprising.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2024
ISBN: 9781538770382
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2024
BOOK TO SCREEN
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