A bravura demonstration of the truth that, as one of the jurors observes, “Our secrets define us as human beings.”
Members of a deeply divided jury fight each other and themselves to render a just verdict in a civil case with more layers than a Dobosh Torte.
Plaintiff Ellison K. Ricard claims that Peyton Burke, the founder and CEO of MediMiracle, fired him because he threatened to tell the FDA about his discovery that Sophrosyne, the anti-addiction treatment the firm had developed, was actually “a drug that kills Black people.” Burke claims that she fired Ricard because he confronted and attacked her before a crowd of her employees. If both claims seem problematic—Ricard can produce no records demonstrating that Black subjects taking Sophrosyne in clinical trials had higher mortality rates than white subjects; his paralysis means he uses a wheelchair—you ain’t heard nothing yet. Opposing attorneys M. Bailey Klaus (plaintiff) and Cicely Pagano (defense) take turns swatting down witnesses’ testimonies, producing new evidence, and revealing their own prejudices. The real drama, however, is in the jury room. After two of the eight jurors get tossed off the case for scandalously improper behavior, the others wrestle in real time, debating the merits of every new bombshell as it’s produced without waiting for the trial to end. The Vet Tech, the Retiree, the Cleaner, the Furniture Magnate, the Scientist, and the Editor form alliances and opposing teams, changing their minds and sides as they seek to persuade each other of a truth that seems to recede further and further. The result is less like 12 Angry Men than like Raymond Postgate’s Verdict of Twelve (1940), painfully sharpened by the case’s racial elements.
A bravura demonstration of the truth that, as one of the jurors observes, “Our secrets define us as human beings.”Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9798874748418
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Blackstone
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.
A successful Vermont podcaster who’s elicited confessions from dozens of criminals finds herself on the other side of the table, in the hottest of hot seats, over her own troubled past.
Poe Webb was only 13 when she saw her mother, Margaret McMillian, get stabbed to death by the man she’d picked up for a quickie. Poe had vowed revenge, but how could a kid find and avenge herself on a stranger who’d vanished as quickly as he appeared? In the long years since then, Poe’s made a name for herself as a top true-crime podcaster who routinely invites her guests to tell her audience exactly what they did. Now, she’s being pressed, and pressed hard, by Ian Hindley, whose fake name echoes those of England’s Moors Murderers, to join him in a livestream her fans will find riveting because, as Hindley tells her, he’s actually Leopold Hutchins, the pickup who stabbed her mother 14 times when she failed to use her safe word. Skeptical? Hindley knows endless details about the killing that were never released by the police. If Poe won’t do the broadcast, Hindley threatens to harm everyone she loves: her father; her producer and lover, Kip Nguyen; and her black Lab, Bailey. And there’s one more complication that makes the pressure on Poe even more unbearable. Seven years ago, against all odds, she succeeded in tracking Leopold Hutchins from Burlington to New York and killing him herself. In fact, it’s that murder that Hindley most wants her to talk about. Which bully is more fearsome, the man who’s threatening her or the man she killed?
Better set aside several uninterrupted hours for this toxic rocket. You’ll be glad you did.Pub Date: Jan. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9781464226229
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Poisoned Pen
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2024
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