From Amazon.com
In this latest entry in Barbara Parker's series featuring lawyers
Gail Connor and Anthony Quintana, Gail gets guilt-tripped by an old family retainer into taking on a case everyone else warns her is not winnable, including her boyfriend, criminal attorney Anthony. But Gail, whose legal practice is primarily civil, nevertheless agrees to represent death-row inmate Kenny Ray Clark, scheduled to die by lethal injection in less than a month. Before she's even read the trial transcript, Gail is convinced Kenny Ray didn't stab Amber Dodson to death. Once she does read it, she's even more certain that he was done in by shoddy police work and poor lawyering, if nothing else.
Gail's no slouch at doing some guilt-tripping herself. She tells her besotted sweetheart that if he really loved her he'd help with Kenny Ray's appeal, and she's not above a little sexual teasing to make her point. Anthony agrees to help, which is lucky since Gail seesaws wildly from being confident she can keep Kenny from his date with the executioner to dissolving in tears when she's certain she can't.
The real culprit is clear from the outset--it's up to Gail and Anthony to get the goods on him. Most of the heat in this thriller comes from the couple's occasional clinches and the steamy Florida weather. Anthony Quintana, Gail's complex, sexy, Cuban-American boyfriend, gets a bit more ink than usual in this outing. That will delight fans who find him as fascinating as Connor. Unfortunately, freeing an innocent man from a date with the death chamber doesn't allow enough time for Anthony to carry out his plan to accompany his ailing grandfather back to the island of his birth; fans of the series will have to wait for the next book to find out what happens when he does. --Jane Adams
From Publishers Weekly
Once readers are pulled in by the intricate plot of Parker's eighth Gail Connor/Anthony Quintana legal thriller (after Suspicion of Innocence), they won't want to skip a word. The premise is simple enough: Gail is asked to take on the case of an old family friend's grandson, Kenny Ray Clark, who was convicted of the stabbing death of a housewife over a decade earlier, indirectly causing the death of her infant son. Now, after 11 years on death row, his appeals are about to run out. Anthony, Gail's on-again, off-again fianc‚, himself a high-powered Florida attorney, warns her of the futility of trying to save Clark. But Gail digs into the records and finds, among other things, a drunk defense attorney, a bogus confession and a witness who would have provided an alibi but was threatened by police. At the same time, she discovers skeletons in her own family's closet that seem to be linked to Clark's case, as well as a crooked real estate deal and some unsavory individuals who don't want her getting involved. With help from Anthony and her cousin Jackie, an idealistic young cop, she races to expose the flaws in the state's case and challenges the bureaucratic "conveyor belt" mentality of the death penalty. If Parker has an ax to grind here, it is the legal system's determination to put judicial procedure and the public's thirst for vengeance ahead of the sanctity of human life. She is a former prosecutor who knows her way around the system; her characters are complex and believable, all of which makes this multifaceted and thought-provoking mystery one of the better ones this year. (Aug. 6)Forecast: Parker hit bestseller lists with Suspicion of Betrayal and looks poised to do so again, having taken on a hot-button issue without being sensational or exploitative.
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