E-book
After dark [electronic resource] / Phillip Margolin.
A top county prosecutor from Oregon is accused of murdering her estranged husband, Justice Robert Griffen, soon after the mysterious death of Griffen's female law clerk.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780307812490 (electronic bk.)
- ISBN: 0307812499 (electronic bk.)
- Physical Description: 1 online resource (295 p.)
- Publisher: New York : Bantam Books, 2011.
Search for related items by subject
| Subject: | Trials (Murder) > Oregon > Portland > Fiction. Portland (Or.) > Fiction. |
| Genre: | Legal stories. Electronic books. |
Other Formats and Editions
Electronic resources
- Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 1995 April
~ Second-novel blues for Margolin (Gone, But Not Forgotten, 1993): a murky, juiceless legal thriller in which lawyers hire lawyers when they're accused of killing other lawyers. A month after his law clerk Laura Rizzati is killed after- hours in the Portland courthouse, Oregon Supreme Court justice Robert Griffen is blown up in a bombing that looks just like the work of Charlie Deems, whose earlier conviction on homicide and drug charges Griffen himself reversed, setting Deems free. But the DA's office is looking even closer to home for Griffen's killer: They think Griffen's estranged wife, Abigail, a star county prosecutor, arranged the bombing in order to save herself $2 million in alimony and then framed Deems, whom she'd fought to put away before her almost-ex overturned the conviction. Calling on cadaverous Matthew Reynolds, unblushingly described as ``America's most famous criminal defense attorney''--the man she's been trying cases against until the day the police take her off in cuffs--Abbie vows to fight the unholy alliance of Deems and her buddies at the DA's office. After all, it's her word against a convicted killer's, right? And for a while it looks as if the unexpectedly shifting patterns of alliances and betrayals- -Abbie's old gang accuses her of hiring a felon to kill the man she once loved, and she's defended by a former courtroom nemesis who seems to be sweet on her himself--seem to promise a ripe payoff. No sooner has Margolin set up this web of ironies, though, than Reynolds's rookie clerk Tracy Cavanaugh, a friend of Laura Rizzati's, turns up some new evidence of a motive that links the two murders (or does it?); the characters get tired of stalking each other and start shooting; and it's all over but for the canned romantic fadeout. Less crudely sensationalistic than Margolin's striking, overheated debut, but also less vigorously plotted, with a dewy- eyed view of legal lust that wouldn't fool a sleepy judge. Copyright 1999 Kirkus Reviews - Library Journal Reviews : LJ Reviews 1995 March
If Margolin's new novel of legal intrigue isn't hot stuff, a lot of readers will be disappointed; his Gone, but Not Forgotten (LJ 6/15/91) sold over a million copies. Here, a high-profile prosecutor is accused of murder. Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 1995 May #4
Margolin's last legal thriller, Gone, But Not Forgotten, shot up bestseller lists, fueled by obvious characters-including a maniacal male killer and two tough heroines-lots of melodrama and a plot with more twists than a bowl of fusilli. Perhaps it's no surprise to see that his new novel features the same ingredients, if in different proportions. Here the killer is Charlie Deems, a crazed coke dealer. It's not Deems who's on trial, though, but the woman who sent him for a time to death row. She's Portland, Ore., prosecutor Abbie Griffen, an ice-maiden whom Margolin sculpts with as heavy a hand as he does Deems-who claims that Abbie hired him to kill her husband, the Oregon Supreme Court judge who's just been blown up along with his car. Defending Abbie is heroine number two, idealistic young lawyer Tracy Cavanaugh, whose ``cheerleader'' looks belie a brilliant mind, and Matt Reynolds, ``America's most famous criminal defense attorney.'' The action is bloated with cliffhangers, overwrought villains and menacing shadows, but all this bombast is forgiven in the face of Margolin's whiplash plotting. The reversals and revelations are many and diabolically clever, with Abbie's-and others'-innocence or guilt always in doubt. No legal-thriller fan, once hooked, will wiggle free of the story line of this hammy but exciting yarn before reaching its utterly surprising, and surprisingly dark, conclusion. Major ad/promo; author tour. (July) Copyright 1995 Cahners Business Information. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 1996 April #3
Margolin's legal thriller, in which a killer claims that a local female prosecutor hired him to murder her husband, spent two weeks on PW's bestseller list. (June) Copyright 1996 Cahners Business Information.
