Successful but lonely hot shot New York lawyer Olivia receives a frantic call one morning from a young girl, who turns out to be the daughter of Olivia’s ex – the one she never really got over. Olivia rushes to his defense and soon discovers he’s being held as the prime suspect in a spree killing that took place that morning. Olivia, professional and competent, immediately goes on the defense, using everything she has to protect her old friend. But soon, a nagging feeling appears that she’s being misled and that all is not what it seems…
I can’t really say much about this book. I don’t usually struggle to fill up three paragraphs, but there you have it. What I liked: Olivia is tough, competent. Burke was a prosecutor before she became a writer, and it shows: the legal part seems realistic enough and is actually quite clever and interesting. The language was a little clunky sometimes, but that may have been my translation (and that’s also the reason I prefer reading in the original language if possible, but I take whatever my Kobo subscription gives me).
What I didn’t like: the whodunnit is predictable and something we’ve seen a hundred times before and so is Olivia’s Gen X equivalent of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl BFF. Speaking of Olivia – FOR ONCE, can we have a protagonist who’s well-adjusted? There’s a whole subplot involving the suspect’s brother that’s never properly explained until the end, yet it keeps being hinted at – a plot device which I dislike intensely.
Overall, though, I enjoyed reading this and it’s well-written enough, but at the end it’s also regrettably vapid and par for the course. It’s a shame, really, because Burke has more potential than she lets on here.
