Review by Booklist Review
In this rapid-fire fictional debut, a personal friend of the president has turned up as the victim of a not-so-apparent suicide--but not before mailing a package to David Sloane, a golden-tongued corporate lawyer with a mysterious past. It doesn't take long for unknown baddies to kill (a) a kindly old woman, (b) an eager rookie cop, and (c) two beloved dogs, thus making matters personal for Sloane, rumpled police detective Tom Mole Molia, and ex-CIA operative Charles Jenkins. Neither plotting nor prose can be accused of subtlety or originality, and readers looking for legal action or psychological depth best look elsewhere. Still, the action keeps coming, so omnivorous thrill seekers who favor Martini and Grisham may want to give Dugoni a look. The jury's still out, though, on whether he has the potential to play in their league. --David Wright Copyright 2006 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The most impressive thing about this gripping legal thriller is what it doesn't do. Dugoni, a lawyer who coauthored a nonfiction book about an Idaho worker brain-damaged in 1996 by cyanide fumes, opens his debut novel with a wrongful death attorney in San Francisco, David Sloane, about to make his closing remarks defending a corporation in a similar case. Sloane, who has won 14 cases in a row, hates his arrogant client and must face an obviously hostile jury. But instead of devoting many chapters to the case, Dugoni quickly moves into some unexpected and very interesting territory: a recurring childhood nightmare Sloane shares with former CIA agent Charles Jenkins, apparently a complete stranger. Meanwhile, unstoppable West Virginia police detective Tom Molia investigates the suicide of a top adviser to the president, and what he finds draws Sloane and Jenkins closer to the truth behind their shared terror: an international conspiracy 30 years in the making. All of Dugoni's characters have a fresh and believable edge, and there is plenty of action in far-flung settings. One looks forward to Sloane's return. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Debut novelist Dugoni already has good writing credentials: his nonfiction The Cyanide Canary was a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. Though a brilliant lawyer, David Sloane has no conscious recall of what must have been an awful childhood-until the suicide of a pal at the White House. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
In this debut thriller, bitter men chase the single sweet thing life has to offer them: revenge. David Sloane, however, is not among the vengeful. Though a decorated ex-marine, he's on the mild-mannered side, an ordinary citizen, a hard-working lawyer--brilliant, successful, but lonely, too, more so than he's prepared to acknowledge even to himself. Practicing in San Francisco, he's had 14 noteworthy wins in a row, and no one who's seen him sway a jury predicts a snapped string in the foreseeable future. And yet someone out there doesn't like him. Or, to put a slightly different spin on it, someone has singled him out for negative attention. His apartment has been ransacked, but nothing is missing. Clearly, an error has been made, David tells himself at first--mistaken identity. Wrong. And soon enough, mysteriously, he comes into possession of something ruthless people will unhesitatingly kill for--a file. It contains a 30-year-old secret, so wicked, so blood-drenched and so explosive that the nation's corridors of power would be cluttered with trashed careers if it were to be revealed. It also contains information important to David for highly personal reasons. In search of dangerous truths, David begins a perilous journey. During it, he finds friends and allies, a woman to love and a whole series of implacable enemies. Dugoni's well out in front until the last 50 pages or so when an unfortunate fusion of over-cooked plotting and overwrought prose results in a tumble. Still, a writer to watch. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
