Guilty minds

Review by New York Times Review

WE FIRST MET Maureen Coughlin when Bill Loehfelm's woman-of-steel protagonist was a cocktail waitress in Staten Island, and we got to know her better after she moved to New Orleans and became a police officer. Maureen is still on the right side of the law, if only barely, in LET THE DEVIL OUT (Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $26), which finds this volatile cop on her worst behavior, using her month of disciplinary probation to beat down men who stalk and attack women leaving bars alone at night. It's the kind of after-hours vigilante work that's gotten Maureen in trouble in the past. But "she was tougher now. Meaner. And she hoped she was smarter." Well, maybe. But physical violence has become her raison d'être; in fact, the only time she feels safe is "when she was running and when she was chasing. And when she was hurting someone else." Maureen has mastered the rationale of "using pain to justify pain," casting herself as the champion of battered women who don't call the police because they've been conditioned to think they've brought all this on themselves. Once she's back on the job, her official assignments include finding a female serial killer whose weapon of choice is a straight razor and keeping tabs on an extremist militia called the Sovereign Citizens. But Maureen is so weighed down by her own addictions (to cigarettes, booze, pills and violence) she's punishing herself as much as the creeps she clobbers into insensibility with her trusty blackjack. Despite all the physical punishment Loehfelm's rogue cop dishes out, there's an air of cozy familiarity about this series. Here Maureen's mentor, Sgt. Preacher Boyd, makes a welcome return visit, but villains like the local power broker Solomon Heath also rear their heads, as do their sociopathic offspring. That's the thing about New Orleans: No one can bear to leave for higher, safer ground, not the evil men who prey on the city's innocents or the decent folks who try to save them, and certainly not Maureen. "She and New Orleans, they were made for each other." Everything about the place captivates her, from the vibrant jazz scene ("Where was this music when she was growing up?") to the comforts of the Irish Garden, Ms. Mae's and all the other great bars she frequents over the course of this entertaining if highly unorthodox police procedural. AND NOW TO slip into something cool by Joseph Finder - not one of his slick thrillers about coldblooded masters of finance but one of his grittier series novels featuring Nick Heller, who walks and talks and uses his fists like a private eye but prefers to be called "a private intelligence operative." In GUILTY MINDS (Dutton, $28), Heller is entrusted with a sensitive case involving a Supreme Court justice. In fact, it's Jeremiah Claflin, the chief justice himself, who's about to be smeared by Slander Sheet, a sordid gossip website claiming that a Las Vegas casino magnate, the grateful recipient of a recent favorable court judgment, has been picking up Claflin's tab for the services of an upmarket escort service. The scandal deepens when the call girl in question winds up dead. Although the content of this thriller is a bit sleazier than that of Finder's tales of corporate shenanigans, his understated style is no less smooth and polished - and classy enough for troubled characters to pause and make a big deal about the relative merits of rye whiskeys like Old Overholt and WhistlePig. TO SOME READERS, a mystery can only involve a genuine puzzle - a complicated plot with specious clues and untrustworthy characters. And for these readers, there is FALL FROM GRACE (Viking, $26). Tim Weaver's shapely narrative is set in the vastness of Dartmoor, the desolate landscape in the southwest of England where a retiree named Leonard Franks, once a high-ranking police detective, went out to the woodshed in his slippers and never came back. His daughter, herself an officer with the Met, hires David Raker, who makes his living finding missing persons, to pick up this cold case. It's a tricky business, all right, especially when the investigation intersects with the tragic story of a woman recently released from a mental hospital and mourning her dead child. Although overly wordy, Raker's first-person account plays fair with the grim facts, while maintaining a level of dread that properly suits the moody setting. PITY ALL THOSE girls, so popular of late in genre novels, who wander off and go missing, only to reappear years later as a pile of bones. Heather Young's debut novel, THE LOST GIRLS (Morrow/ HarperCollins, $25.99), belongs in their weepy company, but the delicacy of her writing elevates the drama and gives her two central characters depth and backbone. The narrative is shared by Lucy, recently deceased but living on in her diary, and her grandniece Justine, who inherits Lucy's decrepit cabin on a lake in Minnesota. Both women have rich stories to tell, but Lucy's draws on her haunting memory of "one of life's sweetest but most fleeting times - the last days before childhood gives way to adulthood." For all the beauty of Young's writing, her novel is a dark one, full of pain and loss. And the murder mystery that drives it is as shocking as anything you're likely to read for a good long while.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 11, 2016]

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Review by Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Freelance intelligence operative Nick Heller, last seen in Buried Secrets (2011), is summoned to a meeting with Gideon Parnell, civil rights icon and the friend and advisor to every president over the last four decades. Parnell tells him that a scurrilous website that specializes in scandal is about to release an exposé documenting the chief justice of the Supreme Court's liaisons with a high-priced escort. Even worse, the trysts were paid for by a wealthy casino mogul who has just won a case before the court. Parnell assures Nick that the charges are baseless and asks him to prove it. Nick quickly proves that the exposé is bogus, but then the supposed escort is murdered, and the murk and the danger ratchet upward. Finder really knows his way around a thriller, and his sensibilities about Washington, scandal, and the immediacy and threat of digital publishing and electronic surveillance seem chillingly plausible. This is an exciting, insightful thriller with finely sketched characters in other words, a sure bet in public libraries.--Gaughan, Thomas Copyright 2016 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

In Thriller Award-winner Finder's lively third Nick Heller novel (after 2011's Buried Secrets), the website Slander Sheet is about to run a story claiming that a highly placed U.S. government official has had a regular relationship with a prostitute. Lawyers for a top international law firm want Boston-based private intelligence operative Heller to check on the story's authenticity. Heller says he isn't interested, but he accepts the assignment after learning that the official in question is Chief Justice Jeremiah Claflin of the Supreme Court. Holes quickly appear in the allegations against Claflin, and Heller blows it out of the water. But it's been too easy, and Heller's instincts tell him there's far more to this case than just a smear attempt on a judge. Who owns Slander Sheet, and what was this case really about? Conventions of the contemporary political thriller abound, but a tight plot, sharp dialogue, and a cast of intriguing characters keep the story a cut above the genre pack. Author tour. Agent: Daniel Conaway, Writers House. (July) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

In his 14th exciting suspense novel, and the third Nick Heller title, Finder (The Fixer) shows off his clever storytelling skills by packing action, politics, and modern detective techniques into a complicated plotline that leads to murder. A top Washington Post reporter writes a salacious story for Slander Sheet, a website specializing in dirt on celebs and politicians; the article details how a crooked casino mogul, whose case recently came before the Supreme Court, supplied a hooker for the chief justice. Shortly afterward, the call girl is found dead, an apparent suicide. Under a 48-hour deadline to discredit the story, Heller, while moving from sleazy bars to fashionable DC digs, discovers the mastermind behind the carefully crafted scandal and the conspiracy to hide a long-buried secret. Verdict Finder consistently writes timely thrillers that explore explosive issues highlighted in current world affairs-in this case, smearing the reputations of powerful politicians. [See Prepub Alert, 12/21/15.]-Jerry P. Miller, Cambridge, MA © Copyright 2016. 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.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Hired to clear the chief justice of the United States of dallying with a call girl, Boston-based investigator Nick Heller becomes entwined in a complicated scheme that leads to murder. Superattorney Gideon Parnell is the Washington VIP who hires Heller. A black civil rights hero who's golfed with all the golfing presidents since LBJ, he's capable of pulling any and all strings in D.C. But he's powerless to prevent the gossip website Slander Sheet from running an expos about Chief Justice Jeremiah Claflin, who reputedly was given three nights with the hooker by a casino mogul in whose favor he had ruled in a recent case. Heller has 48 hours to discredit the story. It's easy enough to determine that Claflin never set foot in the hotel room in which he is said to have consorted with young Kayla Pittswhose working name is Heidi L'Amour. (The judge has one of the better alibis: he was having electroshock treatment.) But after Pitts is found dead, an apparent suicide, and Heller and his crack team infiltrate the secret ownership of Slander Sheet, unsettling new wrinkles in the case point to an unlikely suspect. The book, the third and best entry in a series, is about as airtight as you can get, plotwise. Heller, a former Special Forces operative in Iraq, is a convincing combination of physical toughness and intelligenceone of the book's pleasures is its descriptions of modern detection techniques. And in Mandy Seeger, the former ace Washington Post reporter who lives to regret writing for Slander Sheet, Heller has an attractive running partner and romantic interest. Finder shows off his top-notch storytelling skills, moving with ease from high places to low in the nation's capital. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Chapter 1 Lies are my business. They keep me employed. If you believe scientific studies, we all lie, several times a day. Can't help ourselves. Sure, white lies are the grease that keeps the social engines running. But lies--real lies--are the source of all trouble. My job is really nothing more than figuring out who's lying and why, and to catch them at it. That's all there is to it. Fortunately, I have a knack for detecting lies. At least on my good days. I was sitting in the reception area of the Boston office of the international law firm Shays Abbott Burnham, which was as sleek and polished as a missile silo and just as lethal. Every surface was hard and glassy--the white stone floors polished like glass, the glazed white partitions, the glass-topped coffee tables, the frosted glass walls, the sharp-edged white leather sofa. Even the receptionist, with her brassy blond hair and poreless skin and gleaming carmine lips, perched like a Gorgon behind a curved rampart of gleaming steel you might find in a Swiss bank vault. The décor wasn't meant to put potential clients at ease. You want soft and fluffy, it said, go to a spa. This place had the machine-tooled precision, the gun-oil gleam, of a well-made semiautomatic. It reassured like a Glock under your pillow. Which was exactly the point. Shays Abbott Burnham was one of the biggest law firms in the world. It had more than three thousand lawyers in its offices, in twenty-six countries around the world. It was a one-stop shop. They did white-collar crime and corporate litigation. They defended giant oil companies and Big Pharma and Big Tobacco. They launched hostile takeovers and defended against them.  They didn't mess around. Their clients came there with serious battles to fight. They came seeking blood. But not me. I was there to hear about a lie. I'd received an urgent call the afternoon before from a Shays partner named John Malkin. He'd been given my name by another lawyer who'd hired me a few months earlier for a discreet job. John Malkin had a client who needed my help immediately--wouldn't say who or why, and couldn't discuss it over the phone. We had to meet in person, and as soon as possible. In advance he e-mailed me a nondisclosure agreement and agreed to pay my consultation fee. Whatever he wanted to discuss, it was obviously something serious. I never meet with potential clients without doing at least a backgrounder, to make sure I'm not stepping into trouble. So I'd read a complete dossier on the man. John Epsworth Malkin: Dartmouth, Duke Law summa cum laude, member of the Order of the Coif, which sounds like something you might find framed on the wall of a barbershop. His area of practice was regulatory compliance. If I had to do that all day I'd probably scratch my eyes out. Malkin greeted me in the reception area with a damp handshake and an undertaker's solemnity. He had round horn-rimmed glasses and silver hair brushed straight back. He dressed with the raffish eccentricity that only a senior partner could get away with: pink broadcloth button-down shirt with a threadbare collar, missing one collar button; a gray pinstriped suit whose wide lapels might have been stylish in the 1970s. In one glance I understood him in a way no dossier could ever convey. He hated his job and probably never enjoyed practicing law. He was tired of pumping up his billables and writing memos that no one ever looked at. He was an academic wannabe. He fantasized about retiring early to teach law at a small New England school with smart students and intellectually engaging and genial colleagues. He read every Churchill biography ever published. He cared about his shoes. (His were bespoke, probably from John Lobb, in London.) He collected first editions and maybe fountain pens--the ink blotches on his fingers told me that he wrote with a fountain pen. And (one sniff confirmed it) he was a pipe-smoker but only at home. Maybe he even collected South African cabernets and was inordinately proud of his EuroCave wine cellar. Also, he wasn't the guy who was really hiring me. He was the beard. I was sure of this. They didn't want to give me advance notice of who my client really was. Malkin thanked me for coming. "Does anyone know why you're here?" "I don't know why I'm here." "Good point," he said. He led me down a corridor. We probably weren't going to his office. "And, er, who knows you're meeting with me, or even with Shays Abbott?" "Just my office." "Your office . . ." "My office manager and my forensic tech. But they don't get out much." "That's your whole office? Two employees?" "It's how we maintain our low, low prices." He didn't smile. He probably had no idea what my rates were and wouldn't care if he did. "Mr. Malkin," I said. "I'm on the clock. You're assured absolute confidentiality. Why don't you take me to your leader." He ducked his head and motioned for me to follow him around a corner and down another hall. When we reached a long conference room, I was astonished to see through the glass walls, sitting alone at the head of a long black table, the man I was really there to meet. Chapter 2 His name was Gideon Parnell, and he was a Washington legend. A national legend, actually, the subject of countless profiles in the Times and the Post . I think "60 Minutes" had twice done stories on him. He'd been on the cover of Time magazine. He was a tall, handsome, regal black man of around seventy-five whose close-cropped hair had gone white. His life story was the stuff that newspaper feature writers fantasize about. Raised in poverty on the southeast side of Washington, he'd marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., in Selma. He'd become one of the great civil rights heroes and had golfed with every president who golfed since Lyndon Johnson. Every president, Republican and Democrat, had considered him a friend (to the extent a president really has friends in Washington). He was the ultimate Washington insider, a power broker with extensive connections and friends everywhere. Now he was "senior counsel" at Shays Abbott, though I doubt he actually practiced much law. The more powerful lawyers become, the less they seem to practice. Given the circles he moved in, his being here meant that this had to be serious. Likely he'd flown in from DC to meet me. My curiosity was piqued. He rose, all six feet seven inches of him, and crossed the room in three strides. He enfolded my hand, which isn't small, in what felt like a weathered old catcher's mitt. His other hand grasped my forearm. A classic politician's handshake, but somehow, with him, it felt sincere. I'm pretty big myself--six four and broad-shouldered--but Parnell had more than size going for him; he had presence, and no point pretending that it didn't make a hell of an impression. His charcoal pinstripe suit looked hand-tailored. He wore a silvery tie and a crisp white shirt. There are very few people I genuinely admire, but Gideon Parnell was one of them. The man was a giant, and not just in size. "Mr. Heller," he said, "thank you so much for meeting with us." His voice rumbled like the lowest C in the organ at Washington National Cathedral. He waved a hand around at the conference room, at his colleague lingering in the doorway like a family retainer awaiting further orders. A few people passed by and looked curiously through the glass wall. "John, it looks like the morning rush has begun, so could you..." John Malkin nodded and touched a button on a switch plate just inside the doorframe. The glass wall immediately turned opaque, like a glass of milk. "Thank you, John," Parnell said preemptively. Malkin flinched and then nodded. "Mr. Heller," he said, tipping his head in my direction. He eased out, closing the door behind him. Parnell poured coffee from a thermal carafe into a couple of white stoneware mugs. "You like coffee, and you like it black, I'm told," he said without looking up. I smiled to myself. He handed me a mug and gestured toward the chair next to his at one end of the long black table. "So let me ask you something," I said as I settled into an expensive-looking leather chair. "What was the point of making me sign an NDA? You obviously checked me out. You did your due diligence. You even know how I drink my coffee. So if you'd really done your homework, you know about my reputation for discretion." "Please don't take this the wrong way, Nick--may I call you Nick?" I nodded. "It's not you I'm concerned about." "Then what are you concerned about?" "Others who may be watching this office and me in particular. I have to be extraordinarily careful." "Well, even paranoids have enemies," I said. After a long pause, he said, "A dear friend of mine--I won't say client, because he's not and can't be a client, for reasons you'll soon understand--is about to be viciously defamed by a scurrilous gossip website." "Okay." "This is a gentleman I have known for decades. A man of impeccable moral character. An eminent, I would say great, man. If these outrageous charges are allowed to be published, his entire career will be destroyed." "Is the story true?" "Absolutely not." "Then what's he worried about? Truth is the absolute defense." "Not anymore. Not in the Internet era. I'm not sure you appreciate the gravity of the situation." "Well, you wouldn't have asked to meet with me if it weren't serious. Tell me, Mr. Parnell. How bad is this story?" "It alleges that my friend had a regular relationship with an escort. A call girl. A prostitute." "Is your friend the pope? I could see that being a career ender for His Eminence, maybe." Parnell wasn't amused. "In his position, my friend can't afford the slightest hint of impropriety. His entire career rests on his moral authority." I held his gaze a moment. "And you're not going to tell me who it is." He lowered his head, clenched his jaw muscles, shook his head. "Not until you agree to take the job." "The job is--what? To discredit this story?" He nodded, took a sip of his coffee. Checked his watch. Finally I spoke. "Mr. Parnell--" "I can't tell you," he said. "And I won't take the job until I know who it is." I started to rise. "So I'd say we've reached an impasse." I realized then the secret to Gideon Parnell's success. It wasn't his dignity or his gravitas or his integrity. Not even his storied career. It was his face. The large liquid eyes, the disarming smile: They made him look vulnerable, eager, defenseless. Like a puppy. You wanted to protect him, take care of him. It was disconcerting. But his expression could toggle to stern in an instant. "I want to make sure we're both on the same page before I tell you any more." "Everything you say to me is covered by the NDA I signed." Parnell compressed his lips like a petulant child. "All right," I said. "You want me to discredit a false story. What am I missing here? Why give it any attention?" "Because the story has been meticulously prepared. On the surface, it looks plausible. The website claims to have copies of e-mails, even a video interview with the escort in question. Once this story gets out there, unwinding it will take some time and the damage will be done." "If the story's so solid, why haven't they run it already?" "Because I've made a deal with them. They're giving us forty-eight hours before the piece goes live." "What's the website?" " Slander Sheet ." "Hoo boy." Slander Sheet made even the edgier gossip websites like Gawker and TMZ look like  The Economist . It was one of those trashy, sensationalist websites that no one admitted looking at but everyone did. Or knew someone who did. Unlike old-fashioned newspaper gossip columns, which might run a cutesy blind item about, say, "a certain sixtyish real estate magnate with a much younger trophy wife," Slander Sheet came right out and named names. It was fearless and vicious and just about everybody in the public eye was scared of it. "Well, that sucks," I said. "Indeed. That's why ignoring it won't work. The story will have legs, as they say. It's going to be picked up, and it's going to get a lot of attention. Like the old saying goes, a lie gets halfway around the world before truth has the chance to put its pants on." Maybe not the best expression to use in this situation. I tried not to smile. "Here we are, sitting in the offices of Shays Abbott, the biggest, scariest law firm in the country. Can't you guys just shut this thing down? Threaten an injunction or whatever? Isn't that normally how it plays?" He shook his head slowly. "There's not a damned thing we can do to stop them." "If the piece is false and libelous, can't you get a judge to order them not to publish?" "That's called 'prior restraint,' and it's unconstitutional in this country. Violates freedom of speech." "That doesn't stop you from threatening to file a massive libel suit against this lousy little website. Scare the crap out of them. Kill the snake. Everyone from the White House on down would cheer you on." "And that would just feed the flames. Give the story oxygen, which is exactly what they want." He had a point. "So how do you know what's in the story?" "The reporter e-mailed a list of questions." "To you? Or to this unnamed friend of yours?" "To him." "Did he answer them?" "He ignored them." "And they're running the story anyway?" He nodded. "I don't like this." "Neither do I." "No, that's not what I mean. Something doesn't smell right about this. Like maybe there's more to the story than you're letting on. I'd put this in the 'where there's smoke, there's fire' category. Meaning that there's at least some truth here. So I'm thinking the real reason I'm here is that you want me to do a scrub." Parnell fixed me with a steely stare. No more frightened puppy dog. "If you mean, do I want you to conceal evidence and make witnesses disappear or what have you, you don't know me. As I told you, this entire story is false." "Mr. Parnell, I can't take this on until I talk to your friend." "I'm sorry. That's just not possible. And I'm Gideon." "I understand." I rose and extended my hand, but Parnell didn't take it. "I'm sorry we wasted each other's time." "Sit down, Mr. Heller. Please understand, this is not someone you can just go in and interview." "Well, until I've talked to the guy, I won't do it." I remained standing. "You know damned well you can easily find someone else. There's no shortage of investigators who'd jump at the chance to work for Shays Abbott. I'm in the fortunate position of being able to pick and choose." This was an out-and-out lie. In the past few months I had taken work I once swore I'd never do. Times were hard for everyone. "Perhaps I can arrange for you two to talk over the phone." "I need to look him in the eye, Gideon. Either I talk to him face-to-face or I'm just not interested." "As I say, that's not possible." "Why not?" "Because he's a Supreme Court justice." I slowly sat back down. "Now I'm interested," I said. Excerpted from Guilty Minds by Joseph Finder All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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