Library Limelights 261

Harlan Coben. Tell No One. Ebook download from TPL. USA: Ballantyne Books, 2001.

Dr David Beck is very good at his job as an paediatric physician, but otherwise he’s baffled and upset by mysterious emails in his inbox. After eight years, still grieving the loss of his gruesomely murdered wife Elizabeth, he seems to be getting messages from her—her death was attributed to a convicted and now-incarcerated serial killer. Author Coben is highly skilled at twisting, twisted plots, and this is no exception. Someone wants to meet Beck secretly but violent references to the past interfere with his intent to follow up. The long-buried bodies of two men are discovered near where Elizabeth was brutalized; thus, suspicions and new events start to turn upside down the serial killer scenario. Much of the novel is Beck’s narration, with added input from others that merely increases the mysteries.

Beck tells his best friend Shauna—his sister Linda’s live-in partner―that Elizabeth could be alive; Shauna is skeptical. Linda’s job is heading a prominent charity begun by mega-wealthy businessman Griffin Scope. Unknown to anyone besides Gandle, his trusted assistant, Scope appears to be hunting for Elizabeth by employing a particularly vicious thug. One of Elizabeth’s best friends falls victim to Scope’s man. Then, Beck gets a live video of Elizabeth ... what was she trying to tell or not tell him? By now agent Carlson of the FBI is involved, everyone is spying on everyone else, and Beck is on the run, wanted for more than one murder. His lawyer Hester Crimstein almost despairs (but she’s one tough lady). The reader is challenged to stay on top of the ever-changing action, never mind guess at motives—Coben never slacks. Must say: the few scenes of violence seem almost out of context somehow; they could have been less descriptive.

Bits

▪ I stopped playing Benevolent White Man and became a better doctor. (20)

▪ “I’m sorry,” my dead wife mouthed. (48)

▪ Tonight’s gala celebrated the cause most dear to Griffin Scope’s heart: the Brandon Scope Memorial Charity, named for Griffin’s murdered son. (74)

▪ “Eight years ago, you’ll recall that we hired two men to perform a certain task.” (77)

▪ “So maybe your wife had a friend take these pictures,” she said, trying it on for size. “For insurance reasons or something.” (102)

▪ Those pictures of Elizabeth, battered and defeated, kept popping through my brain like the most grotesque sort of strobe light. (109)

▪ I guess we both had our secrets. (120)

▪ Has this all been nothing but a hoax? (139)

▪ “You have to stall them, Hester. Have them arrest me tomorrow.” (188)

▪ “I don’t want neat,” Carlson said. “I want the truth.” (203)

▪ Assistant District Attorney Lance Fein stormed into Crimstein’s conference room looking like a sleep-deprived weasel. (293)

▪ “The key will be me, Lance. I owe you one because my boy ran. So I, the enemy of the D.A.’s office, will back you up.” (298)

▪ Shauna lived life in your face. She wouldn’t take a step back if smacked across the mouth with a lead pipe. (305)

Stacey Abrams. While Justice Sleeps. Ebook download from TPL. USA: Doubleday Publishers, 2021.

Be honest: I did not do justice to this book, pun intended. I quit; then I returned. Because I had no patience with intricate chess strategies and trying to relate the pieces to the book’s characters. Also because I could barely follow the science language and functions from one biogenetic company to another. Also, dizzying (and boring) details of U.S. executive-legislative-judicial tactics and tricks. Let’s see the sum of my struggle:

Outspoken Supreme Court Justice Howard Wynn has a degenerative disease similar to ALS. Despite his failing faculties, he has plans for his future, which include naming his bright young law clerk Avery Keene as his guardian should he become disabled. Wynn is also a loose end in the U.S. president’s nefarious game plan that eludes the reader for some time; without Wynn, the Supreme Court is tied on a critical decision that might allow a company merger of great scientific and financial interest. Before you know it, Judge Wynn is in a coma, a shocked Avery -as guardian- meets his estranged son Jared, at least one offshore biotech company is concealing lifesaving (or deathly) secrets of global implication, and certain forces will stop at nothing to push the merger through. Not only is the FBI involved to protect the innocent, Homeland Security steps in to eavesdrop on all involved.

Avery refuses to bow to threats and sacrifice the judge who would block access to the merger. Yet only Avery has the clues to learn what’s really at stake: explosive clandestine experiments. People die; will her junkie mother Rita be one of them? Or will Avery herself be arrested for murder? She must find the judge’s surreptitious chess partner and solve the riddles he left her. Jared, lawyer Noah Fox, and her savvy roommate Dr. Ling are the only allies she can trust. They can’t expose the bad guys without solid evidence. Here’s a cast of dozens, not counting the media furore. A climactic scene involves a most unusual petition before the Supreme Court. Considering the experience of the author, it all hangs together, makes sense; my description, probably less so! It seems I’ve read a lot of very complex thrillers lately, but this one takes the cake. Somewhat above my pay grade scholastic patience level. Legal eagles and science nerds will love it!

Avery

▪ Avery had heard it all before, and she silently recited the Al-Anon mantra, but serenity was a slippery commodity when your mother was holed up in a crack house cursing your birth like a drunken sailor. (29)

▪ “He thinks quite highly of you. Finds you ‘bearably brilliant.’ High praise, indeed, from Howard.” (54)

▪ “He has been my boss and my mentor. But I am not his friend or his confidante or his lover. I am his clerk.” (63)

▪ “In the game, he sacrifices one bishop to put the queen in play.” (278)

▪ Prepared to make her first and last statement to the press, she waited while President Stokes reluctantly yielded the lectern. (406)

Judge Wynn

▪ “Thoreau had it right about nature versus man. Nature always wins.” (14)

▪ “Do you stand by those you promise loyalty to, even when what they ask seems absurd or even perilous?” (80)

▪ When Homeland Security was the other dancer in the pas de deux, he assumed everything told to him was a lie or a cover-up for a bigger lie. (130)

Jared Wynn

▪ “Advar’s biogenetic technology, if coupled with GenWorks’ pharmaceutical research, could save my life.” (144)

▪ “Genetic weaponization is a fringe field. Most reputable scientists would never admit to working on anything of the kind.” (248)

▪ “I think Dad is one of the bishops to be sacrificed to expose the king.” (279)

▪ “My father and a rogue scientist are trying to rig the Court to create a cure they’re not sure exists.” (280)

Bad Guys

▪ “I let this merger happen, and Cooper becomes a billionaire, while I get marched off to prison.” (86)

▪ The financials on GenWorks would show clandestine U.S. funding for a covert military project. (90)

▪ He could kill Justice Wynn now and execute a hit on the girl, but with the marshalls inbound, his likelihood of escape was slim. (128)

▪ “That’s when our chairman learned that US intelligence was terminating the scientists who participated.” (425)

Cryptic Examples

▪ “There were two messages. Ani Is in the River. Find Ani. Another code: WHTW5730.” (223)

▪ On her desk sat the beginnings of a conspiracy theory that would make Watergate look like high school gossip. (294)

▪ “Based on the symptoms, I’m guessing the men were dosed with a bioengineered viral vector that targets haplotypes and edits genes to limit clotting factors.” (374)

Beverley McLachlin. Denial. Ebook download from TPL. Toronto: Simon & Schuster, 2021.

Isn’t it cosmic sometimes, when one book follows another with a common thread? As tenuously as she may relate to the above Justice Howard Wynn, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada McLachlin again delivers a first-class courtroom drama. Hinging on aspects of euthanasia and Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAID), the novel finds spunky lawyer Jilly Truitt defending Vera Quentin on a charge of murder. It’s widely believed that Vera injected her mother, Olivia Stanton, with an overdose of morphine after weeks of Olivia begging her to do it. The elderly Olivia was suffering from crippling pain and concealing her diagnosis of early dementia. Vera rejects a plea bargain because she’s adamant that she did not kill her mother. Her husband Joseph, a prominent Vancouver lawyer, and son Nicholas loyally support her, believing she’s in denial about her actions—no one else was in the house at the time and her mental state has been fragile.

Jilly takes this seemingly hopeless case to court, and it’s a pleasure to follow the surprises that come. Prosecutor Cy Kenge thinks he has a slam-dunk. But whether the courtroom climax and denouement are credible is up to the reader. Jilly’s romance with Michael resumes to a disconcerting point. I so enjoyed Jilly, and McLachlin’s first novel (Full Disclosure, LL173;) but here I was appalled at not one, but four typos that confuse/conflate Olivia’s full name. Shame on the editor. On the other hand, discussions of MAID, which is legal in Canada, were of great interest. Robust advocacy by Dying with Dignity is underway, as we speak, to amend the law to include advance requests. Currently, death must be imminent for medical protocol; as one doctor says, “ ... incipient dementia was not a basis for MAID.”

Jilly

▪ I’ve just agreed to see a woman whose case doesn’t have a hope and been reminded of the existence of a father I’d rather not have. (12)

▪ “It’s like one of those modern classical pieces where the same note plays over and over again, a little variation in rhythm, a different register, but always the same words, I did not kill my mother, and I will not say I did.” (34-5)

▪ In the panic of getting Vera to the hospital, I had failed to see the single biggest implication of what has just happened. (150)

▪ Cy’s narrative is sliding into place. A good man, saddled with a sick mother-in-law and a crazed wife. (178)

▪ Our timing is terrible, Mike’s and mine. Just when we figure out how to be together, our world falls apart. (253)

Vera

▪ “She has a history of mental illness. A jury will see her as unstable, unreliable.” (15)

▪ “Where did all that anxiety stuff go? Is it still there, under her skin?” (103-4)

▪ How can Vera win, when the denial she makes in support of her innocence is undercut by the very fact that denial is part of her sickness and cannot be believed? (268)

Olivia

▪ “Mrs. Stanton used to give Nicholas money without Mr. Quentin knowing.” (79)

▪ “She saw nothing but suffering ahead and did not want to be a burden on her family.” (232)