Dark Moon A Legal Thriller (Audible Audio Edition) Deborah Hawkins Alan Taylor Books
Download As PDF : Dark Moon A Legal Thriller (Audible Audio Edition) Deborah Hawkins Alan Taylor Books
Legendary criminal defense attorney Sarah Knight has spent all of her 46 years hiding the unspeakable secrets of her past. Now, newly arrived in San Diego from New York, she is appointed to represent Alexa Reed, a former US Supreme Court clerk and the daughter-in-law of Supreme Court Justice Coleman Reed. Alexa is arrested for the murders of her ex-husband, attorney Michael Reed, and La Jolla psychologist Ronald Brigman. During bitter divorce proceedings, Brigman declared Alexa's reports of Michael's domestic abuse false, diagnosed her with borderline personality disorder, and gave Meggie and Sam, ages six and five, to their abusive father.
All the evidence points to Alexa. Her gun was the murder weapon and her cell phone places her at the scene of the murders. Sarah is warned that doing anything more than the minimum for her client will be professional suicide. Coleman Reed wants Alexa sentenced to death without delay.
But Sarah and her investigator, ex-FBI agent Jim Mitchell, refuse to be intimidated even after attempts on Sarah and Alexa's lives. They discover Michael Reed's taste for high-priced call girls and his entanglement in an extensive pattern of criminal financial dealings. But when Coleman manipulates the trial judge to exclude Sarah's star witness on the eve of trial, she must risk discovery of her own terrible secret to save Alexa's life.
Dark Moon A Legal Thriller (Audible Audio Edition) Deborah Hawkins Alan Taylor Books
This is the first book I've read by this author. I love legal thrillers, and this one is very good from a story-telling point of view. A few minor nit-picks: First, the widespread corruption is a bit far-fetched. I'm not naive enough to think that corruption does not exist, but this poor defendant seemed to have everybody in a powerful position bound and determined to find her guilty. Despite that, Ms. Hawkins is still able to paint a very effective word picture that kept me captivated from beginning to end.My second minor gripe was the very poor editing. If somebody is getting paid to proof-read prior to publishing, they need to be replaced with somebody else. Lots of improper word usage that seemed to jump off the page as I was reading.
With that said, please understand that I really did enjoy the book, and will look for more from Deborah Hawkins. I am retired from federal law enforcement myself, so I really did enjoy the storyline. I also supervised a number of agents and therefore had to review and approve their reports. So I'm probably a little bit more attuned to proof-reading than most readers. So forgive me if that part of my review came across as too harsh. Very good book and a very good author!
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Dark Moon A Legal Thriller (Audible Audio Edition) Deborah Hawkins Alan Taylor Books Reviews
It took a long time for this to start reading like a “legal thriller.” For well over a hundred pages it felt more like women’s fiction, and I was tempted to bail. Even when, halfway through, it finally began to “move” like a legal thriller, the book remained, to me, primarily, women’s fiction, with strong plausibility issues. The story line requires you to keep your willingness to suspend disbelief firing on all cylinders until the final twist where at least some of the implausibility gets addressed, more or less. I stayed with the book because I liked the defendant and wanted her to go free, and I wanted to know what terrible secret her attorney was concealing. But overall, I can’t give this book either a good review or a bad one. For me, it kind of worked on some levels but not on others.
I enjoyed reading Dark Moon very much. Crime dramas and legal thrillers are my favorite genre (mindless airport reading, books to read in bed at night, etc). I've read many good ones, but also several not so good ones. This one definitely ranks in the very good category.
The book focuses on 3 main characters Sarah, an attorney; Alexa, her client; and Jim, an ex-FBI agent turned PI. Sarah and Jim are trying to prove that Alexa didn't kill her abusive ex-husband and the psychiatrist who accepted bribes and awarded Alexa's children to their terrible father. There are many twists and turns. A love triangle develops. Witnesses come and go. All the while, Alexa's ex father-in-law uses his powerful position to threaten judges and bribe attorneys.
I really enjoyed reading this book. The characters were well developed and completely believable. The plot developed well and the story flowed nicely. There were enough characters to keep it interesting, but not so many that it was hard to keep track. I'm hopeful this author will continue to build on this great first book!
This story is fully engrossing and replete with suspenseful, provocative, and dangerous situations.
A young female attorney with high credentials is charged with the murder of her unfaithful husband, who took possession of her children using his endless pull throughout the local judiciary by virtue of his unscrupulous father's position on the Supreme Court, and who engaged the help of a testimony-for-hire psychologist who deemed her an unfit mother.
Another brilliant lawyer and her investigator try to mount a defense, going up against formidable opposition in both trial and appellate courts orchestrated by her late husband's sinister father; and they face violent, deadly threats as they proceed.
A conundrum arises when the helpful lawyer and her investigator are mutually and seriously attracted, but the female lawyer resists any serious involvement and has casual sex on the fly with others to distract her from the more serious intentions of her honorable investigator.
And what an ending! Secrets galore are unraveled. You'll want to read that at least twice, slowly.
The book has many high-tension, sometimes infuriating, courtroom scenes and is very well written. But, as a San Diegan, I have just one parochial complaint that won't affect many other readers. Namely, why did the author pick "America's Finest City", San Diego, in which to set her tale of corruption? In the highly respectable area from La Jolla to Solana Beach? Oy vey! )
Sarah Knight is a lawyer assigned to defending a woman accused of killing her husband and the psychologist who awarded custody of her children to her husband. Sarah has a scar on her face and a deep dark tragic secret. The setting is San Diego, which the author depicts as fraught with corruption. To add to the complexity, Sarah is pressured to do a minimal defense so that the accused is convicted.
The plot is initially grabbing. And this could have been and should have been a great book. However, I found it hard to like Sarah, finding her standoffish and irresponsible. To illustrate, Sarah meets a stranger in a bar, Jim, who proclaims himself to be a private investigator. Sarah then proceeds to tell him all about her case and hires him to help investigate, without verifying his background. Huh? Jim is a terrible PI and fails to find the simplest evidence and follow up on the basics.
The book contains the requisite escalating threats against Sarah. who does nothing to record the threats or take safety precautions. And it makes no sense that the threatener would just continue to threaten and not carry through.
The ending is supposed to be a shocking twist, but it contradicts much of the storyline and character descriptions. And realistically, there is no way that this shocking twist could not have been uncovered. Especially by the threatener.
This book would have been much better without the deep dark tragic secret, making Sarah more likeable (and smarter), and with more focus on the legal case.
This is the first book I've read by this author. I love legal thrillers, and this one is very good from a story-telling point of view. A few minor nit-picks First, the widespread corruption is a bit far-fetched. I'm not naive enough to think that corruption does not exist, but this poor defendant seemed to have everybody in a powerful position bound and determined to find her guilty. Despite that, Ms. Hawkins is still able to paint a very effective word picture that kept me captivated from beginning to end.
My second minor gripe was the very poor editing. If somebody is getting paid to proof-read prior to publishing, they need to be replaced with somebody else. Lots of improper word usage that seemed to jump off the page as I was reading.
With that said, please understand that I really did enjoy the book, and will look for more from Deborah Hawkins. I am retired from federal law enforcement myself, so I really did enjoy the storyline. I also supervised a number of agents and therefore had to review and approve their reports. So I'm probably a little bit more attuned to proof-reading than most readers. So forgive me if that part of my review came across as too harsh. Very good book and a very good author!
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