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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Jerkins, G. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
A murdered woman. A grieving husband. And their son - a mentally handicapped adult with a history of violent outbursts. A very simple case - or is it? Leo Hewitt, an Assistant DA once blamed for setting free a notorious child-killer, is eager to redeem himself with this intimate and grisly investigation. As he digs below the surface, he discovers more than he ever anticipated. But with each shocking new revelation, Leo is only led deeper and deeper into the darkness - an inescapable trap of blood bonds and twisted family secrets.
Author Notes
Grant Jerkins is the critically acclaimed author of A Very Simple Crime, the"extremely nasty study in abnormal psychology" ( New York Times ). His other novels include At the End of the Road and The Ninth Step . He has worked for ten years advocating for adults with developmental disabilities. He lives with his wife and their son in Atlanta, Georgia.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of Jerkins's disturbing debut, Adam Lee, a successful businessman but a total creep who's on trial for murdering his depressed wife, Rachel, tells the court he didn't kill her because "I loved my wife." Adam supposedly also loves Albert, their mentally retarded grown son, who was originally accused of fatally bashing his mother's head with a crystal ashtray. Since Albert, who was institutionalized for years but was free at the time of Rachel's murder, once killed a fellow patient in a dispute over a pair of socks, the police considered him a likely suspect. Former ADA Leo Hewitt, who lost his position after helping a child killer go free, uncovers some telling clues to the killer's identity. Meanwhile, Monty, Adam's attorney brother, knows a family secret that could change everything. Jerkins juggles his plot twists like a top circus acrobat in this nasty legal noir. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
New York Review of Books Review
Any fanatical admirer of Sherlock Holmes knows how he spent the Great Hiatus, those dark years between his dramatic tumble over the Reichenbach Falls in "The Final Problem" and his sensational re-emergence in "The Empty House." (Unbeknownst even to Watson, Holmes faked his own death and had been traveling incognito in Persia, Egypt, Tibet and other exotic locales.) But aside from writing "The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard" and several other works, touring in Egypt, lecturing in America, serving as a war correspondent in Sudan, supervising a hospital in Cape Town during the Boer War and standing for Parliament, what was Arthur Conan Doyle doing before he brought his great detective back from the grave? Graham Moore takes a brave swing at that pitch in his first novel, THE SHERLOCKIAN (Twelve, $24.99), by juxtaposing two separate mysteries set a century apart and featuring distinctly different sleuths. It's an ambitious approach based on sound scholarship, but the fussy and schematic split-focus narrative only makes us long for the cool, clean lucidity of Conan Doyle's elegant style. The contemporary side of Moore's story begins with a youthful swagger as 29-year-old Harold White is inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars, "the world's pre-eminent organization devoted to the study of Sherlock Holmes," at a banquet at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. Emboldened by the honor, the young scholar assumes the role of amateur sleuth when an elder statesman of the group is murdered before he can unveil his astonishing discovery of the long-lost volume of Conan Doyle's diary, "the holy grail of Sherlockian studies." But there's more romance than logic to the adventures Harold and a perky girl reporter have in pursuit of the missing volume, and the simplistic tone of the storytelling reduces even their boldest exploits to the level of young adult fiction. Moore has far more success with his parallel plot, which casts Conan Doyle, creator of the notoriously misogynistic Holmes, as a champion of women, his eyes opened to Victorian society's monumental injustices as he investigates the serial murders of radical suffragists. Although routinely resolved, the mystery is gripping, and Moore has a feel for the transitional nature of Conan Doyle's era. The heck with Harold's derring-do. Better to stand on Westminster Bridge with Conan Doyle, "struck by the brightness of the street lamps running across like a formation of stars" and burning away the romantic mist of the gaslight era in the "cleansing glare" of the new century. There's a train you want to catch in Sheldon Russell's terrific historical crime novel, THE INSANE TRAIN (Minotaur, $25.99). Powered by an ancient steam engine and traveling over derelict tracks, this old rust-bucket is transporting 50 inmates, many of them criminally insane and violent, from a mental asylum in California, burned down in an arson fire, to an abandoned military fort in Oklahoma. Making the journey even more perilous, there's a killer on board and the only guards are a few hobos, down-and-out veterans of World War II. But it's all in a day's work for Hook Runyon, a "tough but fair" railroad security agent (better known as a "yard dog") who lives in a caboose, collects books and is "well schooled in the depravity of man." One-armed (and aptly named) Hook sets the rugged-but-sensitive tone of this outstanding series, which delivers thrilling action, great scenery and a full cast of complex characters searching for peace in a troubled postwar environment. Not to mention the chance to hop a ride on the Chief, the legendary diesel train whose "red and yellow war bonnet" shines in the sun as she sweeps into the station. "Darkness is drawn to darkness." Grant Jerkins issues that fair warning at the outset of A VERY SIMPLE CRIME (Berkley Prime Crime, paper, $14). Despite this heads-up, the degree of wickedness in his stylish legal thriller still delivers a chill. There's not a soul you can trust in the story, which opens with Adam Lee on trial for the murder of his wife. But if this cold-blooded man did not, in fact, kill his mentally unstable wife, who did? Their developmentally backward and murderously violent son? Adam's brother, the utterly unscrupulous lawyer handling his case? Adam's mistress might come to his defense, but she's disappeared - and who would believe her, anyway? That's precisely the challenge Jerkins throws out in this well-fashioned but extremely nasty study in abnormal psychology, which dares us to solve a mystery in which none of the normal character cues can be taken at face value. It would take a mighty force to shake the sense of complacency that prevails in the middle-class San Diego suburb where Debra Ginsberg has set THE NEIGHBORS ARE WATCHING (Crown, $23.99). While the raging wildfires that force an evacuation of the neighborhood certainly qualify as one of those unnerving events, the folks who live in Fuller Court are more profoundly rattled when Joe Montana's pregnant teenage daughter, Diana Jones, moves in with Joe and his wife, Allison. Never having been told that Joe even had a daughter, Allison is the first to fall apart, but in a very short time just about everyone in the vicinity is sunk in domestic desperation. Ginsberg never really pulls a plot together from her keen and ruthless observations of human foibles, leaving Diana so sketchily drawn she's little more than a metaphor. Honestly, the fire was symbol enough. Has a murdered Sherlock Holmes scholar discovered the long-lost volume of Conan Doyle's diary?
Library Journal Review
Brothers Adam and Monty Lee have overcome a troubled past to become successful adults-or so it seems. Monty is a criminal attorney and the town's most eligible bachelor. Adam is unhappily married to a mentally unstable heiress. Their son, Albert, has never developed past the emotional age of a five-year-old. When Albert viciously attacks his mother, he is placed in an expensive, private institution where he ends up killing his roommate. Meanwhile, Adam and Rachel are barely getting along, and she has become agoraphobic. After Rachel begs Adam to bring Albert home for a visit, Adam goes off for the weekend with his mistress. Rachel is murdered, and Albert is assumed to be her killer. But a rogue attorney in the D.A.'s office isn't so sure. Soon, Adam is arrested, and Monty defends him, with startling results. Verdict No one in this novel is as they appear to be, and the twists and turns never let up until the very last page. This dark, chilling debut, which has been optioned for film by screenwriter Nicholas Kazan (Reversal of Fortune) is a real page-turner and should especially appeal to legal thriller fans.-Stacy Alesi, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., Boca Raton, FL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.