Marcia Clark is back with her next courtroom procedural book and shows the lengths people will go to, to protect secrets:
Charlie Blair not only left Chicago for Santa Cruz behind but also her old name, Lauren Claybourne, in order to not only have a fresh start but also protect her family as well. Charlie has crossed the floor and is now going to be working in the prosecutions office and she hopes that it will be a slower pace and not get a lot of media attention. That is until the Shelly Hansen murder. Charlie is assigned as second chair to the case, and first chair is the office's hot shot lawyer Erika Lorman, who rules the courtroom there and just finished the prosecution of a Celebrity chef. But as Charlie works on the case with Erika, she notices things that are not quite right, not quite following the rules but not quite breaking them either. Charlie gets a bad feeling and feels like she is being set up for something big and unless she can figure out the secrets that Erika is hiding, that is unless Erika figures out her's first.
I really enjoyed Clark's Rachel Knight series so when I saw that Clark had released a stand alone book I knew that I wanted to check it out. I'm a big fan of Clark and her ability to write courtroom procedurals. This probably has to do with the fact that she is a former prosecutor herself, so she knows her ins and outs of lawyer case work as well as what happens in the courtroom and these scenes were my favourite part of the book. The mystery aspect is also well done and I was completely wrong in the direction that Clark was going to take the book, but I am okay with that, I don’t mind be wrong.
There are two main female protagonists in this book and for the most part they are very similar in personality but you tend to like Charlie better due to the choices that Erika made/makes along the way. But they are very very similar in many ways, which isn’t a bad thing, as they are both strong women, but just it just felt lacking in character development. And I’m kind of bummed about how it ended, it didn’t feel right to me as it ended too nicely and maybe a few things were left unfinished.
I think that Clark tries to do a lot in this book in this book and I am not sure if there was really any benefit to the plot line of Charlie and Roman. The only purpose that it served was giving Charlie a reason to leave Chicago and move to Santa Cruz and I think that this could have been achieved in a more simple way and save the Charlie and Roman plot line for a separate book.
I think that Clark is possible planning to turn this book into a series just with how it ended and I would pick up the next book in the series, especially if there are more courtroom scenes. I think if you like courtroom procedurals this should be a book that you pick up.
And on a complete side note, when I had more time in my life I used to do Author Interviews and I had the pleasure of doing one with Marcia Clark back in 2012, you can find it HERE.
Enjoy!!!
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