Neither as meaty nor as finely drawn as Lescroart’s earlier and more emotionally complex thrillers, The Fall nonetheless fits the bill for a combination murder mystery/courtroom drama that dovetails with this country’s soaring racial tensions between police and African-Americans. The Fall deals with the first major legal case of Rebecca (“The Beck”) Hardy, daughter of Lescroart’s serial hero Dismas Hardy. The Beck is now an associate in Hardy’s law firm and gets her first chance at a murder trial in defense of one Greg Treadway, […]
A Wilderness Trek into Self-Discovery
This book is a touching personal memoir with profound lessons for some among us. Cheryl became a lost soul when her mother died at an early age and her family disintegrated. Even Cheryl’s loving husband couldn’t save her from self-destructing as she plunged into heroin addiction and sexual escapades to escape from her pain. That is when the Pacific Crest Trail (PCT) unexpectedly called her name, and set her on a grueling path to self-knowledge. The PCT is a west coast hiking trail that […]
A fun but mostly disappointing sequel to Gone Baby Gone
This sequel to the fabulous Gone Baby Gone was fun, but not up to its more famous predecessor. Baby Amanda is grown up and now a smart and precocious teen with an agenda all her own. Our favorite detective pair Patrick and Angie have gotten past the crisis of conscience that split them up 12 years earlier over Amanda’s earlier fate, and are now married with a daughter of their own, a more cautious approach to life, and a step away from bankruptcy. When Amanda […]
Great tell-it-like-it-is legal tale with just the right mix of humor and courtroom hijinx
A late work that hadn’t caught my eye before, The Litigators brought me hurtling back into the Grisham fold. This book offers a fast-moving and painfully realistic story about mass tort litigation, along with a satisfying array of characters, and just enough laugh-out-loud moments and real-life horror stories to keep those pages turning til the end. The story opens just as young corporate lawyer David Zinc is having a full-scale panic attack on the way to his 93rd floor cubicle where he does mind-numbing financial […]
An unsuccessful glimpse inside the mind of a killer
Nesbo steps away from his standard Norwegian detective fare with this slim new novel that starts and ends with the blood of a murdered man soaking into the snow. Blood on Snow is written from the viewpoint of a mob “fixer,” a contract killer named Olav who is kept on the payroll of Oslo’s biggest crime boss to take care of problems that his boss doesn’t want to think about. These problems range from snitches to competitors to an unfaithful wife. And until Olav catches […]
Jack Reacher in Europe, with an unexpected twist
While I won’t claim it’s his best, or even that great, I found this latest (19th) Jack Reacher story an intriguing enough premise, a rapid page-turner (including the ballistics details which others found boring but which I enjoyed), a truly scary bad guy, and an unexpected punch-to-the-gut ending. Someone has taken a long-distance shot at the French president, but special bullet-proof glass protected him from assassination. The CIA decides, along with Europe’s top intelligence agencies, that this was just a practice run aimed at […]
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