#IReadsYou Book Review: THE BIG LIE

THE BIG LIE
HARPER (HarperCollins Publishers) – @HarperCollins @HarperBooks

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

AUTHOR: James Grippando – @James_Grippando
ISBN: 978-0-06-291504-7; hardcover (February 25, 2020)
368pp, B&W, $27.99 U.S.

The Big Lie is a 2020 legal thriller novel from author and attorney James Grippando.  It is Grippando's 28th novel and also the 16th novel starring Grippando’s Miami-based, criminal defense attorney, Jack Swyteck.  Grippando is the 2017 winner of the Harper Lee Prize for legal fiction (for 2016's Gone Again – Jack Swyteck #12).  In The Big Lie, Swyteck lands right in the middle of an Electoral College battle to determine the Presidency of the United States.

The Big Lie opens at the 2020 Democratic National Convention in Miami, Florida where the Democratic Party is crowning its latest candidate for president, Florida's junior U.S. Senator Evan Stahl, Jr.  There is, however, a persistent rumor that Sen. Stahl is having an extramarital affair and that his lover might be another man.

Cut to November, and the Machiavellian incumbent, President Malcolm MacLeod (an obvious stand-in for President Donald Trump), is claiming victory.  However, he will need the Electoral College to win re-election, because he lost the popular vote by over five million votes.  Now, the Electoral College battle for the White House lands in a Florida courtroom, and Jack Swyteck finds himself with a new client, Charlotte Lee Holmes, a “faithless elector.”  Holmes is a member of the Florida's Electoral College contingent, bound by law and by oath to vote for the winner of Florida, President MacLeod... by the slimmest of margins  Holmes has announced that she will cast her Electoral College vote for Sen. Stahl.

Jack is the caught between a corrupt president (MacLeod) and his manipulative opponent (Stahl).  President MacLeod was recently spared from impeachment only because his political foes were certain they would oust him at the ballot box. Now, he appears to have secured a second term, thanks to a narrow victory in the Electoral College, and he and his allies, including a duplicitous Florida state attorney general, will do anything to keep Holmes' decision from turning others into “faithless electors”.

The president and his Florida machine drag Charlotte Holmes into court on felony charges, which are not enough charges for some.  Jack Swyteck may be the only attorney that can keep Charlotte from being ruled unfit to remain an elector.  Meanwhile, Stahl refuses to concede the election and hopes to convince other members of the Electoral College to become “faithless electors.”

But the media frenzy around Stahl's affair is getting worse, and soon there are threats of violence and actual violence.  Salacious details about Charlotte's life are dredged up, and Jack and his client may have to make their last stand in a stand-your-ground state.

THE LOWDOWN:  I read my first Jack Swyteck novel, Blood Money, back in 2013 when it was first published, and since then, I eagerly await each new Swyteck novel.  The Big Lie is the seventh Swyteck novel I have read and the ninth novel by James Grippando novel that I have read and reviewed.

The Big Lie is many things and is the most genre-bending or genre-crossing Grippando novel that I have read.  It is a legal thriller (of course), a political thriller, a crime thriller, and an action thriller (of sorts).  It is also a family drama and melodrama; for instance, The Big Lie delves into Jack Swyteck's relationship with his dying stepmother.  The families of Charlotte Holmes and Evan Stahl, Jr. are also each a cauldron of hot mess.

I have to be honest.  The Big Lie is a riveting, page-turning read, but it does not quite meet the high standards that Grippando set with the previous four Swyteck novels.  However, Grippando continues to create engaging new characters with each novel, while making returning characters all the more lovable.  So quality characters drive the narrative of The Big Lie, which is why it is another hugely enjoyable James Grippando novel, and that is the big truth.

I READS YOU RECOMMENDS:  Fans of political thrillers and of James Grippando will find that The Big Lie is a must-read.

8 out of 10

www.jamesgrippando.com

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


The text is copyright © 2020 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for reprint and  syndication rights and fees.

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Book Review: THE GIRL IN THE GLASS BOX

THE GIRL IN THE GLASS BOX
HARPER (HarperCollins Publishers) – @HarperCollins @HarperBooks

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

AUTHOR: James Grippando – @James_Grippando
ISBN: 978-0-06-265783-1; hardcover (February 5, 2019)
368pp, B&W, $27.99 U.S., $34.99 CAN

The Girl in the Glass Box is a 2019 legal thriller from author and attorney James Grippando.  It is Grippando's 27th novel and also the 15th novel starring Grippando’s Miami-based, criminal defense attorney, Jack Swyteck.  Grippando was the 2017 winner of the Harper Lee Prize for legal fiction (for 2016's Gone Again – Jack Swyteck #12).  In The Girl in the Glass Box, Swyteck lands right in the middle of the contentious immigration debate when he takes the case of woman who fled the violence of Central America with her young daughter.

The Girl in the Glass Box finds attorney Jack Swyteck on a shopping trip/Cuban culture lesson with his grandmother, his “Abuela.”  By the time, the visit is over, Jack is representing Julia Rodriguez.  Julia and her teenage daughter, Beatriz, escaped bloodthirsty gangs, random violence, and Julia's abusive husband, Jorge Rodriguez, back in El Salvador and now, live in Miami.  After Julia rebuffs her American boss' unwanted sexual advances, he sicks ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) on her.

Stuck in detention, Julia must rely on the talented and versatile attorney Jack Swyteck, to free her from and to keep her out of ICE detention.  However, not only is Jorge in Miami, but also Hugo Martinez, another complication in her life.  The bodies are piling up, and danger is even closer to Julia and Beatriz than either realizes.  Can Jack and Theo Knight, Jack's best friend and former client, really help mother and daughter?  To do so, they will have to put their own lives in danger.

I read my first Jack Swyteck novel, Blood Money, back in 2013 when it was first published.  Now, I expect the first quarter of every year to bring me a new Swyteck thriller.  Although James Grippando does publish a book annually, sometimes he delivers a book that is not about Swyteck or does not center on him.

I thought last year's A Death in Live Oak was probably Grippando's most daring and thrilling Swyteck novel to date.  While it may remain so, The Girl in the Glass Box is now Grippando's most thrilling.  It moves fast and is like the prose equivalent of an action movie car chase.  The last 120 pages (Chapters 48 to 77) are pure pot-boiler, except the pot isn't sitting on a stove; it's being heated by a flamethrower.  I read these chapters as if my life depended on it.  I just couldn't stop, and I stayed up into the wee hours of the morning to finish The Girl in the Glass Box, one of the most effectively thrilling legal thrillers that I have ever read.  Holla!

Grippando always accounts well for his lead character, Jack, and his close family and friends, but with The Girl in the Glass Box, Grippando focuses in on what are essentially the guest stars in this novel:  Julia, Beatriz, and Cecilia (Julia's sister), especially.  This mother-daughter-sister-auntie dynamic is a kind of a love triangle, and Grippando delves into the complications that are natural to such a relationship.  The author also depicts the reality that these women are recovering from a traumatic past.

I wondered where James Grippando would take this series after the complicated and poignant ending of A Death in Live Oak.  The Girl in the Glass Box shows that both the author and his star are just hitting their strides.

10 out of 10

www.jamesgrippando.com

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You'


The text is copyright © 2019 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog or site for syndication rights and fees.

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Book Review: A DEATH IN LIVE OAK

A DEATH IN LIVE OAK
HARPER (HarperCollins Publishers) – @HarperCollins @HarperBooks

[This review was originally posted on Patreon.]

AUTHOR: James Grippando – @James_Grippando
ISBN: 978-0-06-265780-0; hardcover (February 6, 2018)
384pp, B&W, $27.99 U.S.

A Death in Live Oak is a 2018 novel from author and attorney James Grippando.  It is Grippando's 26th novel and also the 14th novel starring Grippando’s Miami-based, criminal defense attorney, Jack Swyteck.  Grippando was the 2017 winner of the Harper Lee Prize for legal fiction (for 2016's Gone Again – Jack Swyteck #12).  In A Death in Love Oak, Swyteck defends a white fraternity president accused of killing a black fraternity president.

Jamal Cousin is the president of the preeminent black fraternity at the University of Florida (UF).  One day, his body is discovered hogtied and hanging from a tree in the dark water swamps of the Suwanee River Valley, near the town of Live Oak, in north-central Florida.  Jamal's murder recalls the gruesome murders of the Jim Crow era, particularly a similar murder of a young black man in 1944.

The police arrest three white fraternity brothers from Theta Pi Omega, the premiere (and all-white) fraternity at the University of Florida, in the killing of Jamal Cousin.  Jamal's death sets off a firestorm that threatens to rage out of control, and defense attorney Jack Swyteck is thrown into the middle of it when he agrees to represent one of the accused, Mark Towson, the president of Theta Pi Omega.

Jack must contend with rising political tensions, racial unrest, and a sensational media, and the evidence against Towson is damning.  It includes a text from Mark's phone to Jamal that references “'strange fruit' on the river.  Inside and outside the old Suwanee County Courthouse, Jack fights to protect his client's life and prove his innocence, and the more he investigates, the more he believes that Mark himself may be the victim of a sinister criminal plan.  Meanwhile, Jack's wife, FBI Agent Andie Henning, is in the north-central Florida area working an undercover assignment that may be connected to her husband's case.

I read my first Jack Swyteck novel, Blood Money (2013), a few years ago.  Since then, I eagerly look forward to each new James Grippando novel, especially the Jack Swyteck series.

A Death in Live Oak is probably Grippando's most daring and thrilling Swyteck novel to date.  The author tackles the red-hot, hot button issue of American racial relations while digging in the past to show that racism haunts all Americans, not only spiritually, but also in affecting the way people act and live to this very day.  Some of this novel's plot, subplots, and narrative may stretch credulity, but the emotions, the heartache, and the betrayal resonate and seem honest.

A Death in Live Oak is a February and winter book release, but it roils like a cauldron filled with several summer pot boiler novels.  Once again, James Grippando proves that he is a high-prince of the legal thriller, filling his novels with the heart and soul and with the sense that flesh and blood people must deal with the consequences of what we think of as mere courtroom drama entertainment.  Fans of suspense, crime fiction, and legal thrillers will find that A Death in Live Oak is a must-read.

9 out of 10

www.jamesgrippando.com

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


The text is copyright © 2018 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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Book Review: MOST DANGEROUS PLACE by James Grippando

MOST DANGEROUS PLACE
HARPER (HarperCollins Publishers) – @HarperCollins

[This review was originally posted in Patreon.]

AUTHOR: James Grippando – @James_Grippando
ISBN: 978-0-06-244055-6; hardcover (February 21, 2017)
368pp, B&W, $26.99 U.S.

Most Dangerous Place is the new novel from author and attorney James Grippando.  It is also Grippando's 25th novel and the thirteenth novel featuring Grippando’s Miami-based, criminal defense attorney, Jack Swyteck.  In Most Dangerous Place, Swyteck defends a woman accused of murdering the man who raped her.

As Most Dangerous Place begins, Jack and his wife, FBI Agent Andie Henning, with their two-year old daughter, Riley, are waiting at the International Terminal of Miami International Airport to meet a family arriving from Hong Kong.  However, not long after Jack's high school buddy, Keith Ingraham, his wife, Isabelle “Isa” Bornelli, and their daughter, Melany, arrive, officers from Miami Dade Police Department arrest Isa.  What's the charge against her?

Isa is being charged with the murder of Gabriel Sosa, a man who sexually assaulted Isa after she went on a date with him when she was in college.  Jack immediately agrees to represent Isa, but soon discovers that he must separate truth from lies.  That undertaking becomes more complicated when a second defense lawyer joins the case, the splashy Manuel “Manny” Espinosa, whose style does not jibe with Jack's.  Jack must dig deep into the pasts of multiple colorful and shady characters, in a case that will take him from Florida State Prison to a legendary Miami nightclub and from the shiny side of Miami to one of the most dangerous places in Venezuela.

I read my first Jack Swyteck novel, Blood Money, a few years ago, and followed that up with Black Horizon.  Now, the only James Grippando novels I really want to read are Swyteck novels.  At this point, I have sold myself on the idea that I know Jack Swyteck as if he were a real person.  I guess that successful bestselling authors who write book series have to compose their stories in such a way as to make readers gradually become attached to the characters.

However Grippando isn't just about churning out a series.  When he is at his best, Grippando writes twisty thrillers that offer one surprise after another, even to the last page in some cases.  The title, Most Dangerous Place, references the FBI factoid that the most dangerous place for a woman between the ages of 20 and 30 is in a relationship with a man.  Well, Most Dangerous Place the novel makes the reader wonder who is really the victim and who is really the perpetrator.  The line between innocence and guilt blurs, and the reader is forced to consider that cold-blooded revenge might actually be retribution, rightful and justified.

Once again, James Grippando proves that his legal thrillers deserve to be read as much as any other bestselling author's legal thrillers.  John Grisham, I'm looking at you.

A-

www.jamesgrippando.com

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux a.k.a. "I Reads You"


The text is copyright © 2017 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

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Book Review: GONE AGAIN - A Jack Swyteck Novel

GONE AGAIN
HARPER (HarperCollins Publishers) – @HarperCollins

AUTHOR: James Grippando – @James_Grippando
ISBN: 978-0-06-236870-6; hardcover (March 1, 2016)
400pp, B&W, $26.99 U.S.

Gone Again is a 2015 crime and mystery novel from author and attorney, James Grippando.  It is also the thirteenth novel featuring Grippando’s Miami-based, criminal defense attorney, Jack Swyteck.  In Gone Again, Swyteck takes on his first death-row client since The Pardon.

Three years ago, 17-year-old Sashi Burgette vanished on her way to school.  The night after her disappearance, ex-con Dylan Reeves was stopped for drunk driving,  The police found Sashi's panties in his trunk, still damp with Reeves' semen.  The police videotaped Reeves' drunken explanation, which they spun into a confession, sealing his fate.  As the novel begins, Reeves is just days away from being executed.

To help some old friends, Jack Swyteck has rented office space at the old house where the Freedom Institute is located.  Swyteck got his start at the Institute, which defends death-row inmates, but he does not plan on doing that kind of work again.  Fate, however, brings Debra Burgette, the mother of Sashi, to Swyteck's door.

Debra claims that Sashi has been calling her, which the police have dismissed as a cruel hoax.  Swyteck feels compelled to take her case and to help the Freedom Institute as it tries to get a stay of execution for Dylan Reeves.  Meanwhile, the State Attorney refuses to consider new evidence in Reeves' case, and the governor of Florida has signed Reeves' death warrant.  An innocent man may be executed, and it is up to Jack Swyteck and his colleagues and friends to find Sashi or find answers.  But the truth is complicated and the case is full of twists.  Meanwhile, Swyteck's wife, FBI Agent Andie Henning, is in the middle of a difficult and dangerous pregnancy.

I read my first Jack Swyteck novel, Blood Money, a few years ago, and followed that up with Black Horizon.  Last year, James Grippando offered readers two non-Swyteck novels, the ruthless Cane and Abe and the heist novel, Cash Landing.  I enjoyed Cane and Abe, but I found Cash Landing's lead character to be hard to like, which spoiled the book for me.

I was thrilled when HarperCollins offered a galley/review copy of Gone Again, after I learned that it was a new Swyteck novel.  Like Blood Money, Gone Again is twisty and shocking, and although the book was a late winter release, it is the perfect summer potboiler.  The reader will race through this page-turner, which is full of courtroom theatrics, depraved bad guys, and lurid family melodrama.

James Grippando is not a prose stylist, but his clean, efficient storytelling suggests that he is an author who truly enjoys telling his audience a riveting story.  Gone Again presents what is essentially an ending of one part of Swyteck's life and also a beginning of a new life, one that may be unknown even to the author.  Whatever it is, wherever this series goes, Grippando's tales of suspense have earned him a devoted audience that will be waiting around a campfire the next time he decides to tell a story.

A-

www.jamesgrippando.com

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2016 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for reprint and syndication rights and fees.

Review: CASH LANDING

CASH LANDING
HARPERCOLLINS/Harper – @HarperCollins

AUTHOR: James Grippando – @James_Grippando
ISBN: 978-0-06-229545-3; hardcover (June 2, 2015)
384pp, B&W, $25.99 U.S.

Cash Landing is a 2015 crime novel from author James Grippando, the second book by the author to be released in 2015 (following January's Cane and Abe).  Cash Landing is based on real-life crime that occurred during the fall of 2005.  Grippando's novel focuses on a band of amateur thieves that is successful in pulling of an airport heist, but is less successful in dealing with all that money.

Cash Landing introduces Karl “Ruban” Betancourt, a guy who has always played by the rules.  Being a goodie-good didn't stop the bank from taking his house, nor did it stop his restaurant business from going bust.  Ruban thinks that he and his wife, Savannah, deserve more than what life has given them.

Every week, a hundred million dollars in cash arrives at Miami International Airport.  That money is shipped by German banks to the Miami branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, and only a select group of trusted workers moves the bags through customs and loads them into armored cars.  These commercial jets pregnant with bags of U.S. currency are called “money flights.”  Ruban plans on “catching” one of those flights in order to get the money he believes he deserves.

In November 2009, Ruban makes the big move with his crew:  Jeffrey Beauchamp, Ruban's coke-head brother-in-law; Craig “Pinky” Perez, Jeff's uncle who is also an ex-con; Octavia Alvarez, Ruban's longtime friend who came over from Cuba with him; and bit-player, Marco Aroyo.  Their target is Lufthansa flight 462 (a Boeing 747), and Ruban and company pull off a successful heist, speeding away with $7.4 million in cash.  However, FBI Special Agent Andrea “Andie” Henning believes the best way to catch these thieves is to follow the money, but there are actually several interested parties looking to follow the money.

Cash Landing is the fourth James Grippando novel that I have read.  I loved the first three, but I am disappointed in Cash Landing.  It really isn't a heist novel so much as it is a crime drama.  The problem is that the drama is boiler plate and the characters are mere shadows, unable to become fully developed characters, even by the end of this novel.

Honestly, I don't like the characters in this book.  I don't care about their motivations, and I took only a little more interest in their conflicts.  Even Andie Henning, who has been an exciting character in other Grippando novels, is flat here.  Spoiler alert:  Jack Swyteck, the star of several of Grippando's novels, makes a cameo appearance in Cash Landing.  I squealed when he was revealed; yes – squealed.  I did not know that I liked this fictional dude so much.

Anyway, Cash Landing is not so bad that it is unreadable, but if an unknown or unpublished writer tried to sell this book to Harper, he or she would receive a form rejection letter from the publisher.  Die hard fans of James Grippando may be the only ones who want to read Cash Landing.

C

www.JamesGrippando.com
facebook.com/jgrippando

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux; support on Patreon.


The text is copyright © 2015 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for syndication rights and fees.

Book Review: CANE AND ABE

CANE AND ABE
HARPERCOLLINS – @HarperCollins @James_Grippando

AUTHOR: James Grippando
ISBN: 978-0-06-229539-2; hardcover (January 20, 2015)
368pp, B&W, $26.99 U.S.

Cane and Abe is a 2015 crime novel and suspense thriller from James Grippando, a New York Times bestselling author of legal thrillers.  My previous experiences with Grippando are the two most recent novels in his Jack Swyteck series.  In Cane and Abe, a South Florida prosecutor becomes the prime suspect in the disappearance of his wife, which may be connected to a serial killer who is dumping bodies in cane fields throughout South Florida.

Abraham “Abe” Beckham is the senior trial counsel at the Office of the State Attorney for Miami-Dade County.  Abe may a star prosecutor, but he has suffered some heartache.  He lost the love of his life, his beautiful wife, Samantha Vine, to cancer.  Some say he remarried to quickly, when Abe wed Angelina, who had been his girlfriend before he married Samantha.

Abe's personal soap opera takes a backseat when a woman's body is discovered, dumped in the Everglades, and Abe is called upon to monitor the investigation.  The FBI is tracking a serial killer in South Florida, who is called “Cutter,” and this body may belong to his latest victim.  Cutter's brutal methods of murder recall Florida's dark past, when men, who were practically turned into slaves by large sugar companies, cut sugarcane by hand with a machete in the blazing sun.

Then, things go horribly wrong.  Angelina disappears, and for some reason, FBI Agent Victoria Santos makes Abe the top suspect in both his wife's disappearance and in the murder of the woman just found in the Everglades.  Suspicion surrounds Abe, mainly because everyone seems to suspect him of doing something wrong.  And Cutter may watching him.

I have to admit that Cane and Abe is indeed the “spellbinding” novel that HarperCollins, the book's publisher, calls it.  HarperCollins gave me a galley copy of Cane and Abe for review, and I'm glad they did.  I found this book hard to stop reading once I started.  It is a summer potboiler for chilly winter nights, and it casts a spell that binds you to its riveting prose.

However, Cane and Abe is about 40 to 50 pages too long.  That is what keeps it from being the perfect suspense and mystery thriller.  There is a point where the novel should end.  Past that point, Cane and Abe alternates between being engaging and being annoying.  Authors should also realize that red herrings can sometimes become stinky fish that can ruin a story, when there are too many of them.  Luckily, James Grippando fills this novel with characters that do crazy things, the kind of crazy things which actually make sense from the standpoint of motivation.

What keeps Cane and Abe from being derailed by being a bit too long (see, size does matter) is that the reader will try to find out what each character's part in this conspiracy is.  What is his or her's real motivation?  That will keep you thinking about the book on those occasions when you have to stop reading it for a bit.

A-

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2015 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this blog for syndication rights and fees.

Book Review: BLACK HORIZON

BLACK HORIZON
HARPER (HarperCollins Publishers) – @HarperCollins

AUTHOR: James Grippando
ISBN: 978-0-06-210988-0; hardcover (March 4, 2014)
384pp, B&W, $25.99 U.S.

Black Horizon is a 2014 legal thriller and crime fiction novel from author and attorney James Grippando.  Black Horizon is the eleventh novel in a series starring Grippando’s Miami-based, criminal defense attorney, Jack Swyteck.  Black Horizon finds Swyteck in the middle of an international legal battle over a Cuban oil spill that soon turns into an international terrorist conspiracy.

Fifty years from now, it likely that few if any will remember James Grippando as a great American novelist.  This review, however, is about the here and now.  Now, when you pay $26 plus tax for a book, it better be worth your money, and Black Horizon is worth your money and your time.

As Black Horizon opens, Jack is getting ready to marry his longtime fiancé, Andie Henning, who is an undercover agent for the FBI.  The festivities are hampered by the arrival of Hurricane Miguel, but Jack and Andie’s wedding won’t be the only place Miguel causes trouble.

Off the coast of Cuba is the Scarborough 8, the world’s largest oil exploratory rig.  During the storm, there is an explosion on the rig, which sinks the structure.  Now, oil is spilling into the ocean, and an oil slick heads straight for the United States – specifically the Florida Keys.

Meanwhile, Jack and Andie’s honeymoon in the Keys ends when Andie is called away on an assignment for the FBI that is shrouded in secrecy.  Jack is asked to represent Bianca Lopez, a Cuban woman who immigrated to America and became a citizen.  Her Cuban husband, Rafael Lopez, was a worker on the Scarborough 8 (a “derrick monkey”), and he was killed in the rig explosion.  Although the explosion occurred in foreign waters (Cuba), Jack files a wrongful death lawsuit in a U.S. court for Bianca.

However, the suit soon clashes with an FBI investigation (in which Andie is apparently involved).  Jack’s longtime friend and cohort, Theo Knight, is implicated in a murder.  And Jack becomes the target of everyone, including the U.S. government, high-powered rival attorneys, and a mysterious figure who claims to know what really happened on the Scarborough 8.

Last year, HarperCollins offered copies of James Grippando’s Blood Money, the tenth Swyteck novel, to book reviewers.  I took a review copy on a lark, and it paid off because Blood Money was a hugely-entertaining read.  When Harper offered Black Horizon, I took it.  I have to admit that I don’t think that it is as good as Blood Money.  Blood Money holds a mirror up to modern American media culture and the reflection reveals something ugly and sad.  That novel also dug deep into the dysfunction of a modern American family, and it the findings were, shall we say, un-pretty.  Black Horizon does not run quite as hot.

Black Horizon is less a legal thriller than it is a political thriller.  In Blood Money, there was real blood and money, and the truth behind the blood money was repulsive, tragic, and made for damn-good reading.  Black Horizon is a murder mystery, complicated by competing and often selfish interests.  It is the legal thriller turned into a small-scale international thriller, filling with conflicts and competing interests.  Grippando cleverly suggests (without actually saying it) that most of the people in this book spend so much time fighting for their own causes that they forget that people actually died in the rig explosion.

Black Horizon gives the reader the thrill of the chase as Jack tries to uncover whodunit in an ever-growing cast of characters with reason to have done it.  I enjoyed the chase, especially the last 50 pages of this book, because Grippando is crafty in the way he finally reveals who, what, when, where, and how.

Last year, I wrote that Blood Money was the beginning of a beautiful reading-list friendship with James Grippando.  Black Horizon makes me keep the friendship alive.

B+

www.jamesgrippando.com

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux


The text is copyright © 2014 Leroy Douresseaux. All Rights Reserved. Contact this site for syndication rights and fees.

Book Review: BLOOD MONEY

BLOOD MONEY
HARPER (HarperCollins Publishers) – @HarperCollins

AUTHOR: James Grippando
ISBN: 978-0-06-210984-2; hardcover (January 2013)
342pp, B&W, $26.99 U.S.

James Grippando is an American author and trial lawyer. He is known for writing suspense novels in the crime fiction genre, including legal thrillers, apparently drawing upon his experiences as an attorney.

Blood Money is Grippando’s latest book. A 2013 crime fiction novel, Blood Money is also the tenth novel featuring Grippando’s Miami-based, criminal defense attorney, Jack Swyteck. I took a review copy of Blood Money from Harper on a lark. Thank you, Mr. Lark. I have no regrets because Blood Money is a hugely-entertaining read.

Blood Money begins with the most sensational murder trial since O.J. Simpson. Sydney Bennett, sexy night club waitress and good-time girl, was charged with the murder of her 2-year-old daughter, Emma Bennett. Three years after the drama began, Sydney is found not guilty. Millions of “TV jurors” had already convicted Sydney in the courtroom of public opinion. Now, the shocking “not guilty” verdict has them out for Sydney’s blood.

And some of that rage and vitriol has been reserved for her attorney, Jack Swyteck, who never really wanted to take Sydney’s case and basically had it fall in his lap. Jack is ready to ride out the verdict’s fallout, which includes angry, profanity-laced phone calls and even death threats. However, the cable news network, BNN (Breaking New Network), leads a flurry of media-fed rumors, claiming “blood money” in the form of seven-figure book and movie deals. The craziness explodes in an incident that puts a young college student, Celeste Laramore, in a coma.

The media blames Jack for what happened to Celeste, but her parents reach out to him for help. Others reach out for a piece of Jack. Faith Corso, host of BNN’s The Faith Corso Show, targets him. The mysterious Merselus watches Jack’s every move. Jack’s fiancé, FBI agent Andie Henning, wonders if Jack’s case is endangering her career. Jack’s legal career is in jeopardy, and so is everyone he loves. To discover the truth behind Emma Bennett’s murder and what happened to Celeste, Jack has to take on many powerful forces, some hiding in the shadows and others targeting him.

Being a semi-literary snob, I generally avoid novels that compete for space on the various bestsellers’ list and also novels that could be considered “pop fiction.” Plus, I am a science fiction and fantasy fan, so I spend time reading books in those genres. I am glad that I threw aside pretentiousness and some H.P. Lovecraft that I want to read in order to get down into Blood Money.

The term, “page-turner,” was invented to describe great reads like Blood Money. The surprises and twist-and-turns had me flipping through this book as if my life depended on it. I took this book everywhere in order to read at least a few pages while waiting or running errands. There are so many shockers in here that you will either find it too contrived or a sumptuous feast of titillation.

Readers, of course, will recognize Blood Money’s similarities to the Casey Anthony murder trial. Faith Corso bears more than a passing resemblance to tabloid cable news harpy, Nancy Grace, who made both blood money and blood fame, off the Anthony murder trial. BNN, however, is less CNN and more FOX News. Grippando, however, takes Blood Money’s murder case and criminal conspiracies far beyond anything that happened in the real world.

Anyway, for me, Blood Money is the beginning of a beautiful reading-list friendship with James Grippando.

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www.jamesgrippando.com

Reviewed by Leroy Douresseaux