From Publishers Weekly
An unexpected twist energizes this exemplary legal thriller: the reader is thrown right into the middle of the story, along with special prosecutor Kelsey Thatch, when she arrives in Galilee, Tex., to investigate a double murder and a kidnapping in which the main suspect, Billy Fletcher, is the brother of Galilee District Attorney Morgan Fletcher. Like many small-town crime novels, this one features a tangle of family relationships, as well as a matriarch who runs the place?here, the imposing Alice Beaumont, who owns the factory that dominates Galilee. Beaumont's daughter Lorrie was one of the murder victims; her granddaughter Taylor is missing; her daughter Katherine is Morgan Fletcher's wife, and so the accused's sister-in-law?which, in Beaumont's mind, gives her more than enough right to tell Kelsey how to run her prosecution. But there are many skeletons in the Beaumont family closet, and Kelsey discovers them in a series of revelations that draws the reader inexorably into an increasingly complicated plot. While the solution to the murder/kidnapping doesn't quite balance the buildup, all the other plot elements are well matched, from the skeleton in Kelsey's own closet to her romance with a police assistant who may or may not be trustworthy. Ex-DA Brandon (Local Rules) shines in the trial scenes, and throughout infuses vitality into an overworked genre.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Library Journal
Kelsey Thatch, an assistant DA, is sent to a remote East Texas town to prosecute an unpleasant double murder involving the town's ruling family. A suspect is in custody, and the only puzzling aspect of the apparently straightforward case is that the dead couple's baby is missing. With more self-confidence than evidence, Kelsey takes the case to trial. Not much to our surprise, the obligatory reversal in the last chapter makes us see that the defendant, his relatives, and the courts of Defiance County have been carefully manipulated by the real murderer. This novel by the best-selling author of Loose Among the Lambs (Pocket, 1993) offers mildly diverting courtroom drama but is not interesting enough to overcome the flat dialog and weakly sketched characters. For large popular collections.?Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
