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Summary
Summary
"It's mid-August, and San Antonio is on edge. Over the summer three children have briefly disappeared, each returning home with chillingly similar accounts of where they have been - of the man who took them in, tended to them, touched them in all the wrong ways. It is a story that has scraped a raw nerve. The city wants action, demanding immediate retribution: Find and punish the man the newspapers call the "serial child molester."" "For District Attorney Mark Blackwell, in the midst of a reelection campaign, the case could be a windfall - an opportunity to make headlines and the six o'clock news. His old boss, former DA Eliot Quinn, has come to him with a deal. The molester, represented by high-powered attorney Austin Paley, wants to turn himself in...not to the police, but to the District Attorney himself. Weary of compromise, jaded by the system's failures, Blackwell sees a chance not only to energize his campaign, but to recharge his own passion - a clear-cut case of doing good in the face of evil." "But the clarity is an illusion, and the windfall is about to turn into a Texas-sized tornado with Mark Blackwell at the eye of the storm. The confessor recants, the children are unable to identify him, and the case begins to crumble. And all the DA has left is questions: What could drive an innocent man to give himself up, subject himself to a city's violent hatred and recrimination? Was he coerced and by whom? And why would a lawyer in Austin Paley's position dirty his hands by taking on such a client?" "The answers lie in the memories of one ten-year-old boy. Tommy Algren has seen the pictures in the paper, the reports on TV, and he has a story to tell, a story that could rock the city to its very foundations. Tommy's testimony leads to a shocking revelation, one which pits Blackwell against the city's power elite - the old boys' network, where promises are always kept, favors always returned, and secrets never violated. To bring out the truth, Blackwell will have to cross his mentor, Eliot Quinn, a man who knows where the bodies are buried...and who may have buried a few himself. For in a world of money, power, and influence, the line between innocence and guilt is just another string to be pulled."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Author Notes
Jay Brandon is an attorney and author. He was born in Texas in 1953. Brandon received a master's degree in writing from Johns Hopkins University.
Brandon has served with the Court of Criminal Appeals, the Baxter County District Attorney's Office, and the San Antonio Court of Appeals during his legal career. He practices law in San Antonio, Texas.
Brandon's novel, Loose Among the Lambs, was a main selection of the Literary Guild. Another novel, Fade the Heat, was nominated for an Edgar Award for Best Mystery Novel of the Year. Booklist magazine gave his novel, Deadbolt, an Editor's Choice award. An article he wrote about the judicial races in San Antonio won a Gavel Award from the State Bar Association in 1994.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
San Antonio DA Mark Blackwell returns in this high-powered, courtroom drama involving a well-connected attorney accused of child molestation. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
It only begins when the fat lady sings, as San Antonio D.A. Mark Blackwell (Fade the Heat, 1990) learns in this crackling tale of a child-abuse confession too good to be true. Forgetting the maxim never to trust a freebie, Blackwell allows his old boss Eliot Quinn to talk him into accepting Chris Davis's surrender on charges of having kidnapped and molested two young boys. Standing before the judge, though, Davis recants his confession, and when Blackwell tries to cobble together a case from the boys' testimony, one of them positively identifies the perp as Austin Paley, Blackwell's old friend and Davis's lawyer. At the same time, a third boy, seeing Paley on TV news, spontaneously announces that this was the man who abused him in an incident he's kept secret for two years. More witnesses don't make a stronger case against an opponent like Paley, however, as Blackwell realizes when he ties Paley to an old coverup of urban development gone murderous--and sees just how capable Paley is of calling in favors to the powers that be in his desperate attempt to stay out of jail: one of the witnesses suddenly refuses to testify--an obvious beneficiary of a big payoff--and another begins to get cold feet. As if the political chicanery doesn't make the terrain slippery enough, Blackwell also has to cope with ethical reservations when Quinn gives him the details of Paley's own abused childhood (a secret Quinn has been covering up on his own) and sees how closely Paley's childhood--and the neglect of his star witness, Tommy Algren- -mirror his own distant relationship to his son David. Brandon proves unexpectedly canny about the devastating appeal of molesters to their young victims, and shows again that nobody, not even Scott Turow, can outdo him in blow-by-blow courtroom suspense- -even though once the verdict is in, you may wonder what all the fuss was about. (Literary Guild Selection for Winter)
Booklist Review
In San Antonio, a twisted sexual deviant confesses, then recants. A victim then identifies another player--attorney Austin Paley--as the perpetrator. It falls to DA Mark Blackwell to sort out the highly publicized case. Quick scene shift to the trial, comprising half the text, pitting Austin Paley's word against the victim's and showcasing Brandon's clear talents for the drama of cross-examination. Brandon slowly scales up the tension, producing surprise witnesses and withholding the consequences should Paley be convicted; Paley is a powerful string puller and could tell of the whereabouts of a number of buried bodies. But Brandon drops this plot line, content to skillfully construct his courtroom dialogues, missing in the process an opportunity to portray corruption at city hall. Brandon delivers for his numerous readers by maintaining doubts until the jury's verdict; perhaps he's saving the corruption angle for a more daring plot next time, for his alter ego Blackwell is now his serial protagonist. Brandon has all the props for a legal thriller (see also his Rules of Evidence [BKL Ja 1 92]), but he needs to swing for the fences to break into legal mysterydom's big leagues. ~--Gilbert Taylor