Another overstuffed ramble through the legal system from Lashner, who trades smart and entertaining riffs for narrative...
Lashner’s sardonic defense attorney unravels layers of deception in the retrial of a charming convicted killer.
A dark and stylish woman named Velma Takahashi hires Philadelphia lawyers Victor Carl (Past Due, 2004, etc.) and Beth Derringer to secure a new trial for suave chef François Dubé, who has already served three years for the violent murder of his wife Leesa. He—or someone—shot her through the neck. Victor, who dryly narrates the tale, is unconvinced of Dubé’s innocence and concerned that Beth, “the patron saint of lost causes,” has fallen for his continental charm and blinded herself to the facts. Nonetheless, money talks; the two take the case, and Victor begins investigating. And there’s much to look into. The state’s star witness was Seamus Dent, a petty criminal with an addiction to karaoke. Not long after the trial, he was killed in a suspicious police shooting. Victor reconstructs this crime, while also looking into the checkered past of a police detective named Torricelli, another key witness who may have perjured himself, and verifying allegations of Dubé’s rampant womanizing. The supposed flash point for the killing was Leesa’s confrontation of Dubé regarding his extracurricular activities. Relatedly, who is Velma Takahashi and why is she footing the bill for Dubé’s defense? Victor digs up several seamy backstories about the Dubés, including drug addiction and pornography with underage participants. Along the way, he and Beth have several disagreements stemming from their different views of the defendant, arguments that put a real strain on their relationship. A grim and equally complex though less grisly subplot has Victor on the trail of missing children in a pro bono family court case. Meanwhile, casting a pall over Victor’s life and a comic sheen on the story is the saga of Victor’s increasingly throbbing tooth. He makes the mistake of choosing loopy Dr. Bob Pfeiffer to ease his dental pain.
Another overstuffed ramble through the legal system from Lashner, who trades smart and entertaining riffs for narrative tension.Pub Date: May 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-06-072156-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2005
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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