Blood Defense by Marcia Clark

First Line: I raced in the studio and hopped into the empty chair in front of Bonnie, the makeup wizard.

It's a struggle for criminal defense attorney Samantha Brinkman to keep her fledgling practice afloat, but when she gets the chance to take on a high-profile double-murder case on her home turf in Los Angeles, she almost turns it down. Although one of the victims is a beloved television star and the case could easily make her a media sensation, the person Samantha would be defending is an LAPD detective-- and she has little use for the police.

Even though she has doubts about the decorated veteran cop's innocence, she and her two associates need the money and the exposure. In no time at all, Samantha's pulling out all the stops to find evidence that will clear her client's name. But when a shocking secret comes to light, Sam realizes that the man she's defending may be one of the most dangerous sociopaths she's ever encountered.

Marcia Clark's first Samantha Brinkman mystery uses the author's prior experience as a criminal defense attorney. Blood Defense is a fast-paced story with a plot that kept me guessing, and it certainly doesn't lack in verisimilitude. However, there was "too much middle" which did slow down the action a bit until the explosive ending.  

The secondary characters all seemed rather one-dimensional, too. This is definitely Sam's show. She is a nuanced, fascinating character, but unfortunately, I could never warm up to her. Sam always has one eye on the percentages and keeps close tabs on what she can reap from every sentence she speaks, every smile she bestows. Useful for a lawyer who's trying to get her practice off the ground, but not the sort of person I enjoy being around. There's also another reason why I didn't warm up to Sam. I can't go into this reason in any depth because I would reveal too much of the story, so I'll just say that she makes several morally ambiguous choices that I don't agree with. 

With the exception of a slightly sagging middle, this is a good legal thriller; however, its main character will keep me from reading further in the series. (Perhaps I'm more prosecutor than defense attorney.)
  

Blood Defense by Marcia Clark

ASIN: B0146LBFIE

Thomas & Mercer © 2016

eBook, 400 pages

Legal Thriller, #1 Samantha Brinkman

Rating: B+

Source: Purchased from Amazon. 


 

At The Poisoned Pen with Marcia Clark!

Going to see Marcia Clark at The Poisoned Pen was the first time Denis and I had gone anywhere together since we'd returned from our trip to California. You know... that trip where any time we got close to Los Angeles, it rained. Guess what? It rained all the way to our favorite bookstore. If this keeps up, we're going to be able to hire out the Jeep to all the parched places here in the Southwest!

L to R: Marcia Clark and Barbara Peters

According to host Barbara Peters, "Marcia Clark for me spells trouble."  Before her last appearance, there was a gunman at the Los Angeles International Airport. While folks at The Poisoned Pen were getting updates from Marcia, reporters from CNN and the like were texting Clark wanting her to give them updates.  To continue this troubling theme, Barbara said, "When I pulled out of the driveway with the rain sheeting down I thought, 'Of course. It's Marcia!'" 

We were at The Poisoned Pen for the release of Clark's second Samantha Brinkman mystery, Moral Defense. In answer to a fan's question, Clark told us that she'd been a defense attorney as well as a prosecutor. It's a good change of pace for Clark to write from a defense attorney's perspective since they aren't "bound by as many restrictions as prosecutors are." 

At this point, the interview wandered into strange territory, with Peters remarking that she hadn't realized that the television series The Blacklist was true until she'd read a certain article about the FBI in the newspaper. This then led to the two women talking about the 1952 election when Earl Warren was Dwight Eisenhower's only serious competition for the Republican nomination. It was rather obvious that a deal had been done after Eisenhower became president because Warren quickly became a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. What was so surprising was the fact that the conservative Warren became such an activist while serving.

Marcia Clark

Barbara asked Clark if it had ever happened that things you thought were going to go one way wound up going another? "Well... sure!" Clark replied, and we all knew what this was referring to. Barbara quickly nipped any future questions in the bud by saying, "For every O.J. question, I get to talk about the Cubs!" (This was just the day after their win in the World Series-- and Peters grew up in the Chicago area.) Marcia wholeheartedly endorsed the idea.

Talk then turned back to books. "All my life experiences are coming through in these stories," Marcia said. "In the Samantha Brinkman stories, I'm able to talk about social or legal issues that are very important to me. In Moral Defense I'm able to talk about child adoption as well as child abuse through a prism so that it isn't 'icky' if that makes sense."

These books also allow the author to write a darker, morally ambiguous character. Defense attorney Samantha Brinkman hates the police because they didn't do well by her when she was a child. She was raised by a single mother who was (and still is) a monster. In the first book, Blood Defense, she finds herself defending a police officer accused of a double homicide. Clark advised any of us who had yet to read Blood Defense to read it first because Moral Defense continues several threads that were set up in Blood Defense. Her Rachel Knight series has been written as standalones. 

Available Now!

TNT bought the option for Rachel Knight, but it didn't get picked up as a series. ABC has optioned the Brinkman books, and they're currently getting ready to film a pilot. Two screenwriters are working with Marcia to produce the scripts.

"Writing scripts is like writing haiku," Clark laughed. Fortunately her writing load has lessened a bit. "Putting out two books a year is craziness!" This woman still has a caseload as a lawyer, she's writing books, and she's writing the pilot for a television series. Whew! She did admit that she didn't have a personal life, and we could all see why.

Barbara herself could certainly relate. "Most of the time Rob comes home with the dogs just as I'm leaving to come here. We travel just so we can see each other." 

Marcia and Barbara both believe that trial lawyers make better storytellers than judges do because judges have such a passive role. In fact, one of Marcia's fans described judges as "high-priced observers."

Clark "wanted to be a writer since the age of five, and crime fiction and Nancy Drew were my favorites. I just never thought I could make a living at it." When she got a chance to write scripts for a television show, she told us, "Script writing got me into novel writing."

Available Now!

A fan then spoke up, telling Marcia that she's been a prosecutor for ten years now because of Clark. Her concern? "TV leaves too much out. Can you keep it real?" 

"The parameters of television mean that you have to tell a man-bites-dog story. Something that's short and direct, but within those guidelines you can still tell the truth."

Another fan wanted to know about Clark's writing influences. "The writing styles of everyone I read influences me," Clark said. "I particularly like noir writers. And there's James Ellroy. Jim Thompson. Hammett. Chandler. Sara Waters."

And she has thought of writing a standalone from the point of view of a juror. 

The fans were very talkative this evening, which had a lot to do with how personable Clark is. Another asked her about the motivations of police officers and lawyers who write books. Are they doing it to have things finally come out right, or to tell the story they couldn't tell during the investigation or trial? Marcia said yes to both.

If you'd like to hear more about Marcia's writing process or the trademark battle Barbara had over the name of her bookstore, or a few other topics, I urge you to watch the entire program on The Poisoned Pen's Livestream channel. It was a fun, informative evening!

Guilt By Association by Marcia Clark

Title: Guilt By Association
Author: Marcia Clark
ISBN: 9780316129510
Publisher: Mulholland Books, 2011
Hardcover, 368 pages
Genre: Legal Thriller
Rating: B+
Source: LibraryThing Early Reviewer program

First Line: He snapped his cell phone shut and slid it into the pocket of his skin-tight jeans.

Los Angeles District Attorney Rachel Knight is a member of the small, select group known as Special Trials, and as such, she's used to dealing with the most complex and high profile cases. Rachel and the rest of the group are used to spending a lot of time in each other's company, but they talk shop; they don't talk about their lives outside the job.

When another member of the group, Jake Pahlmeyer, and a young boy are found dead in a rent-by-the-hour motel, Rachel is in total shock. She must also take over his toughest case: the rape of a young woman from a rich family.

But that's not all. No matter the gossip swirling around Jake's death, no matter that she didn't know what Jake did in his time away from the office, Rachel knows something's not right, and she's willing to put her job-- and her life-- on the line to uncover the truth.

Normally I would steer well clear of a book written by a celebrity author, but the synopsis sounded so good that I knew I had to give it a try. I'm glad I did. Clark shows skill in developing an engrossing plot that moves at an assured pace. Her familiarity with Los Angeles came through loud and clear, and the character of Rachel was extremely well done.

How well done? Her intelligence and skill at her job were very evident, and a few of her flaws made me shake my head (a sure sign that the character is becoming real to me as I read). If you eat out with Rachel, be warned: she's always on a diet and thinks nothing of stealing food from everyone else's plate. Keep your fork handy. Also, Rachel gave details every time she made a wardrobe change. I'm not a typical female, so the fashion updates got a bit boring. And... Rachel enjoys her alcohol a bit too much. She needs to take care.

Clark also has a good turn of phrase, as when she describes the entrance to the county jail as "the gates of Mordor", or when she talks about a faded woman looking "as though she'd been run through the wash too many times."

I thought I had the mystery solved-- several times. Each time I had the solution in the bag, Clark put a knot in the plot and made me rethink everything. I like that. Am I looking forward to more books featuring Rachel Knight? You bet I am!

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April 2011 New Mystery Releases!

Spring has well and truly sprung here in the Sonoran Desert. I'm hoping that I'm healed up enough so Denis and I can hop in the Jeep and head off on a trail or two so we can check out the wildflowers.  Until then, I'm cleaning up Casa Kittling a bit at a time-- not just for a highly anticipated house guest, but so I can spend lots of time this summer in the pool.

Before I go off to clean the bathroom floor and then sort through an almost 30-year-old yarn stash, let's see what new books being released in April have me adding to my wish lists.

The titles are grouped by release dates, and I've included the information you'll need to find them at all your favorite book spots.  I hope one or two of these titles have you drooling, too!

 ==April 5==

Title: The Hanging Wood

Author: Martin Edwards

Series: #5 in the Lake District mystery series set in England and featuring DCI Hannah Scarlett of the Cold Case Squad and retired historian Daniel Kind

ISBN: 9781590588529

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, 2011

Hardcover, 278 pages

"Twenty years ago, a teenage boy, Callum Hinds, went missing in England’s Lake District. His uncle was suspected of having done the boy harm and interviewed by the police. When he committed suicide close to his cottage in the Hanging Wood, everyone assumed it was a sign of guilt. But the body of the boy was never found.

Now his sister, Orla Payne,  has returned to the Lakes and takes up a job in an atmospheric residential library, close to her father’s farm, the upmarket caravan park, and the Hanging Wood. She wants to find the truth about Callum’s disappearance, and--at the prompting of Daniel Kind--making a drunken call, tries to interest DCI Hannah Scarlett, head of Cumbria’s Cold Case Review Team, in the case."

Title: The Fifth Witness
Author: Michael Connelly
Series: #4 in the Mickey Haller series set in Los Angeles, California
ISBN: 9780316069359
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, 2011
Hardcover, 448 pages

"Connelly's compelling fourth legal thriller featuring Mickey Haller finds the maverick L.A. lawyer who uses his Lincoln town car as an office specializing in "foreclosure defense." Haller's first foreclosure client, Lisa Trammel, is fighting hard to keep her home, maybe too hard. The bank has gotten a restraining order to stop Trammel's protests, and she becomes the prime suspect when Mitchell Bondurant, a mortgage banker, is killed with a hammer in his office parking lot. A ton of evidence points to Trammel, but Haller crafts an impressive defense that includes "the fifth witness" of the title. Connelly has a sure command of the legal and procedural details of criminal court, and even manages to make the arcane, shady world of foreclosure interesting. While the prose may lack some of the poetic nuance of his early novels, the plot is worthy of a master storyteller."

Title: The Busy Woman's Guide to Murder

Author: Mary Jane Maffini

Series: #5 in the Charlotte Adams professional organizer series set in upstate New York

ISBN: 9780425240601

Publisher: Berkley Prime Crime, 2011

Paperback, 304 pages

"Mona Pringle, the local 911 operator, is calling Charlotte Adams with her own emergency: Serena Redding, a high school "mean girl" who used to torment Mona, is coming back for a reunion. When Mona talks about how good it would feel to kill Serena, Charlotte doesn't believe she means it. But when a woman who looks like Serena is killed in a hit- and-run, and another former mean girl is also run down, Charlotte realizes she needs to look both ways for the now-missing Mona."

Title: Dogs Don't Lie

Author: Clea Simon
Series: #1 in the Pru Marlowe Pet Noir series set in New York state
ISBN:  9781590588628
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press, 2011
Paperback, 260 pages

"Pru Marlowe isn't your ordinary animal psychic. A tough girl on the  run from her own gift, Pru left the big city to return to her picturesque Berkshires hometown looking for a little peace. Too bad that her training as an animal behaviorist got her mixed up with  Lily, a rescue dog, and Charles, her person. Now Charles is dead, and Lily looks good for it. After all, Lily is a pit bull, a fighting-ring dropout, and way too traumatized to give Pru a clear picture of what she has witnessed. But Pru knows something about bad girls trying to clean up, and, with a sense of justice strong enough to overcome her dislike of human society, she takes the case. Listening to the animals, Pru picks up clues--and learns there are secrets in the pretty little town that make murder look simple. Unable to tell  anybody about her psychic abilities, uncertain at times about her own sanity, Pru comes to realize that if she clears Lily, she’ll likely become the prime suspect--or the next victim. While the only  creature she can totally trust is her crotchety tabby Wallis, Pru’s got to uncover the real killer--and find a way to live with her gift--before the real beasts in the town savage her and those she has come to love."

==April 7==
 

Title: Inspector Singh Investigates: A Deadly Cambodian Crime Spree

Author: Shamini Flint

Series: #4 in the Inspector Singh series based in Singapore

ISBN: 9780749953478

Publisher: Piatkus Paperback, 2011

Paperback, 320 pages

"Inspector Singh is in Cambodia - wishing he wasn't. He's been sent as an observer to the international war crimes tribunal in Phnom Penh, the latest effort by his superiors to ensure that he is anywhere except in Singapore. But for the first time the fat Sikh inspector is on the verge of losing his appetite when a key member of the tribunal is murdered in cold blood. The authorities are determined to write off the incident as a random act of violence, but Singh thinks otherwise. It isn't long before he finds himself caught up in one of the most terrible murder investigations he's witnessed - the roots of which lie in the dark depths of the Cambodian killing fields."

Title: The Devil's Edge
Author: Stephen Booth
Series: #12 in the Ben Cooper and Diane Fry series set in England's Peak District
ISBN: 9781847444790
Publisher: Sphere, 2011
Hardcover, 352 pages

*UK Release*

"The newspapers call them the Savages: a band of home invaders as merciless as they are stealthy. Usually they don't leave a clue. This time, they've left a body. The first victim is found sprawled on her kitchen floor, blood soaking the terracotta tiles. Before long, another corpse is discovered, dead of fright. As the toll rises, it's up to DC Ben Cooper and DS Diane Fry to track down the killers. But the enemy isn't who they think it is. Beneath the sinister shadow of the mountain ridge called the Devil's Edge, a twisted game is in play -  a game more ruthless than the detectives can imagine."

 ==April 11==

 Title: Murder to Music

Author: Lesley Cookman

Series: #6 in the Libby Sarjeant series set in Kent, England

ISBN: 9781907726545

Publisher: Accent Press Ltd., 2011

Paperback, 368 pages

*UK Release*

"Libby Sarjeant and her friend Fran are invited by Fran's creative writing tutor to investigate a house that is reputedly haunted. For once, Libby can be as nosy as she likes without ploughing straight into a murder investigation, for the only deaths here appear to have occurred over a hundred years ago. But perhaps someone alive today doesn't want Libby to continue? And if so, will she be safe?"

==April 20==

Title: Guilt by Association

Author: Marcia Clark

ISBN: 9780316129510

Publisher: Mulholland Books, 2011

Hardcover, 368 pages

*Upcoming review on Kittling: Books*

"L.A. prosecutor Rachel Knight is stunned when her office soul-mate, Jake Pahlmeyer, is found shot to death in a sleazy motel along with a 17-year-old boy, raising ugly suspicions that she doesn't want to acknowledge. Given Jake's top case to work--the rape of the teenage daughter of one of the DA's prominent contributors--Rachel is warned by her boss to leave her colleague's death alone. But with her big heart and hard head, she uses her network of sources and risks career and safety to pursue both cases, teaming up with Detective Bailey Keller and following leads to Hispanic gangs and porno rings in the seamiest parts of the city. Clark offers a real page-turner here, with smart, fast-moving prose; a skillfully constructed plot; and a protagonist well worth knowing. Rachel, whose past is only hinted at, is a well-rounded character who's as tough with suspects as she is sensitive with young victims. A top-notch legal thriller that will leave readers wanting more." 

==April 26==

Title: Death on Tour

Author: Janice Hamrick

Series: #1 in the Jocelyn Shore series based in Austin, Texas

ISBN: 9780312679460

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2011

Hardcover, 320 pages

"A passport's not needed to enjoy Hamrick's ditzy debut, the first in a new cozy series and the winner of the 2010 Mystery Writers of America/Minotaur Books First Crime Novel Competition. While Austin, Texas, high school teacher Jocelyn Shore and her fashionista cousin and best friend, Kyla Shore, are on an Egyptian tour, one of their group, unpopular 55-year-old Millie Owens, takes a fatal plunge off the great pyramid of Khafre outside Cairo. The police later determine that Millie was murdered, stabbed in the neck. Entries in a journal that Jocelyn finds in Millie's bag suggests someone on the tour might be dangerous. Good-looking Alan Stratton, who's traveling alone and wears no wedding ring, adds romantic interest. Hamrick does a good job capturing life on an exhausting budget tour as her snazzy if snarky amateur sleuth, who tends to be hard on the middle-aged and elderly, investigates some fishy fellow tourists with a hypercritical eye."

Are you eagerly awaiting any of these titles, too? Which ones? Do tell!