A Flawed Hero Anchors The #1 Lawyer by James Patterson and Nancy Allen

By

Scott D. Parker

Sometimes, you need a lawyer. And sometimes, you want to read about one.

Fresh off my first political thriller in many a year (as reviewed last week), I wanted to dive into a legal thriller. Probably stemmed from my enjoyment of the Apple TV version of Scott Turrow’s “Presumed Innocent” but the book I selected was part of the original group of books at a local grocery store. And, yeah, it’s another James Patterson book.

The #1 Lawyer by James Patterson and Nancy Allen was published earlier this year so it’s still in hardback. It’s also in audio which is how I consumed this story. Kevin Stillwell does a great job at narrating the exploits of Stafford Lee Penney, trial lawyer from Biloxi, Mississippi. Now, the best thing Stillwell does is not affect a deep Southern drawl. But he’s got just enough of an affect that you never forget where this story takes place. 

Stafford Lee (you know he’s from the South when he goes by two names) is, well, the #1 trial lawyer in southern Mississippi. He’s never lost a case. And the case we get from the start is a doozy. Doctor Daniel Caro is accused of murdering a patient, one in which he was intimately involved. Author Nancy Allen is an attorney herself and the nuances of trying this case were fully fleshed out. The entire first act of the book is the Caro case, and it was enthralling. It was exactly what I was looking for. In fact, all of Act I, the portion of the book devoted to the Caro case, could have been its own novel.

But it’s the major twists that keep coming that make this book enjoyable. And I use twists in the plural. It’s not a spoiler—it’s right there on the cover—to say that Stafford Lee becomes himself a suspect in a murder. But you’ll never guess who or why until the very end.

A Flawed Lead Character

In a decent amount of the stories I consume—including books, TV, and movies—the lead characters don’t get hurt too much. Maybe that’s some sort of internal thing in my head steering my decisions a certain way or maybe the kinds of stories I like involve likable lead characters who don’t often suffer. Stafford Lee is likable—even when he stumbles—but it’s his vulnerabilities that really drew me in. 

He’s an excellent attorney, and we see that in Act I. And you kind of think he’ll just skate through to the end of the book. But the subsequent events hurt him and he finds himself not knowing what to do. The deeper he gets, the more things are just piled on top of him and you don’t really know how he’s going to get out of his predicament. And he’s stubborn so that doesn’t help. There are multiple times when I wanted him to just shut up and let someone help him, but no. He’s got to do things his way. 

He emerges from the story not unscathed, but he has grown. That makes for a very satisfying ending. 

Grocery Store Books 2: James Patterson's Blow Back

by

Scott D. Parker

Can you really go wrong reading a novel with the name of James Patterson on the cover?

For the second novel in my research into Grocery Store books, I selected a thriller by James Patterson and Brendan DuBois, Blow Back. Say what you want about Patterson’s output, but the man knows a good story when he sees it, and he and his team can write remarkably good loglines. For this one, it’s: An American President goes Insane.

It’s been quite awhile since I last read a political/military thriller, but what I got was what I expected: multiple POVs, multiple threads, all leading to a grand finale. This book delivered on all fronts. 

Like many good stories, we start with an action scene. Benjamin Lucas is in South Africa on a mission. The problem is that he gets made. What I particularly enjoyed are all the little details Benjamin relates—how he tries to evade the bad guys—before and after he is made as a spy. 

But his story is the equivalent to a pre-credits sequence in a James Bond film. No sooner is he captured than the action turns back two months. Liam Grey and Noa Himel, both CIA operatives, are sitting in the White House. Keegan Barrett is six months into his term and he has a job for them. You see, Barrett is also a former CIA spy as well as the agency’s former director. He knows the nature of America’s enemies, but he also knows all the red tape (read: laws) that prevent a vigorous American response to global threats. 

So the president has a plan: create two teams who operate and report solely to him. These two teams will be off-the-books, conduct their missions on both foreign and domestic soil, and take out enemies. Liam gets the foreign assignment while Noa stays in America. They question the legality of the orders—they come from the president—yet they follow them. 

Gradually, however, their doubts begin to bubble to the surface, especially when Barrett starts talking more in the singular (“You are helping me”) rather than the greater good. But who will believe them? Who can help them? And how much trouble are they in? Quite a bit, and things get really interesting when new CIA director, Hannah Abrams, gets into the action.

It’s a Thriller But It’s Still About People

The action is intense and the pace is breakneck with enough tangents and background to make the reality of something like this unsettlingly real. That’s what you want in a thriller and Patterson and DuBois deliver the goods. 

But what I came to really appreciate were how they handled side characters. Whenever one of our leads would meet a side character who might play a small but decisive role, the authors would give a short biography of that side character. In the past (and maybe I just wasn’t reading certain books), authors seemed not to care who this random person manning a station was. All that was necessary was for the lead character to call them and get them to do something. 

Patterson and DuBois take a different approach. Our leads do need to call a random person manning a station but we get a biography of that person. It’s not long, but it’s long enough for us to get a deeper understanding of who that person is and why they do what they do. Maybe that kind of thing is standard nowadays in political thrillers, but, like I said, it’s been a long time since I’ve read one.

Oh, and one of them in particular? Excellent. I started the chapter thinking one thing and then had my expectations completely turned on its head. That’s what I want when I’m reading a book like this.

As the story went on, I began to think about the ending. Given the premise, how do the lead characters take on the most powerful man in the world and come out on the other side? Well, you’ll have to read the book to find out, but I thoroughly enjoyed the ride.

P.S., As I continue to read books that I saw in the grocery store, I’ve already finished my next one. It’s a legal thriller. Tune in next week to read about it. 

Lion and Lamb: The Book With the Wittiest Banter This Side of Nick and Nora

by
Scott D. Parker

“They can catch a killer—if they don’t kill each other first.”

That’s the tagline for LION & LAMB, the new novel by James Patterson and Duane Swierczynski, released just a couple of weeks ago and I downloaded the audiobook that very day. Yet I had to finish another book before I pushed play on Lion & Lamb, but as soon as it started, I wondered why it took me so long.

Okay, fine, it was only a week.

Quarterback Archie Hughes of the Philadelphia Eagles is a week away from starting in the NFC Championship Game, the last step before the Super Bowl. And he’s found dead in his car.

But things don’t add up. That’s when Philly’s two most high-profile private investigators take opposing sides of the case. Witty, charming, and roguishly handsome Cooper Lamb is hired to find out the truth for the widow, Francine Hughes. The district attorney’s office reaches out to Veena Lion, a wicked-smart PI who can be as cold as her martinis but coy with what she knows.

The pair have a past and it’s referenced from time to time, but that just makes this pairing and their wonderful tete-a-tete that much more fun. We get to avoid the meet-cute and just get plopped down in the middle of what is the highest-profile case they’ve handled.

I am a shoe-in for “Nick and Nora”-type stories: The Thin Man movies, Hart to Hart, Moonlighting, and The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal. So I was already in the bag for a tale like, but here’s the real secret:

This book is So Much Fun!

Patterson is known for many things, but high-speed pacing is certainly among the top things you think about when you consider reading one of his novels. From the jump, you are plunged into the action and sent barreling from one scene to the next. Swierczynski, a native of Philly, added lots of local color and I suspect local Philadelphians got a kick out of all the places mentioned.

The mystery at the center of the book is twisty—NOTE: I have not finished the book yet, but I couldn’t wait to write about it—but it is the characters that jump off the page (or out of my earbuds) and land fully formed.

I’m an avid audiobook listener and the two main narrators are so good at their readings that you basically don’t need the attributions. Lisa Flanagan embodies Veena just as if she stepped out of a 1940s PI film but with an utterly modern sensibility. Her tone alone lets the listener in on just how much (or little) Veena thinks about certain characters. Corey Carthew is the voice of Lamb and you can hear the sing-song snark just eek out of every piece of dialogue. He’s a single father with a young daughter and son and the relationship between that trio is fantastic. It’s like Lamb is having the time of his life trying to solve this case.

A third narrator, Joshua Kane, uses his deep baritone to let us know the chapter names and the scenes. His voice is one that when I looked him up, I realized I recognized from, of all things, commercials.

When you find a book or characters that you instantly form a connection with, you just want more and more stories. As a writer, I know how long the process can take.

Which is why I’m requesting, on behalf of all the reading audience, that Patterson and Swierczynski write a new Lion and Lamb novel every year.

Oh, and TV execs? Read this one. And then make the series. Call me. I’ve got some ideas on casting.

The President is Missing by Bill Clinton and James Patterson

By
Scott D. Parker

Almost from the day it was announced, I knew I wanted to read THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING by Bill Clinton and James Patterson. On the one hand you have one of the all-time best-selling authors who has created his own fiction factory. On the other, you have a former president who served for eight years in the office and could provide vital details as only a man who sat in the Oval Office could. It was a match made in heaven.

But would the book be any good?

It’s an honest question, but let’s be honest: if it’s got Patterson’s name on it, the story will at least be serviceable.

And I’m here to tell you it’s more than serviceable. It’s pretty darn good.

The story opens as President Jonathan Lincoln Duncan, newly widowed, is facing the prospect of a compelled testimony in front of a Congressional committee. Impeachment is in the air because Duncan recently ordered a special forces raid seemingly to save notorious terrorist Suliman Cindoruk, leader of the Sons of Jihad group. The Speaker of the House—a member of the unnamed ‘other party’; Duncan’s party affiliation also remains unnamed making it more bipartisan—who has designs on the presidency smells blood.

But Duncan has an even greater problem. Somehow, Suliman’s cyber hackers have implanted a virus in the computer systems of the Pentagon. Codenamed “Dark Ages,” if released, the resulting damage would be catastrophic. It would literally plunge the US into a modern dark ages. And one of six members of Duncan’s inner circle—including the Vice President—is a traitor because a young girl from the Republic of Georgia is asking to meet with Duncan. Alone. And she utters “Dark Ages” to prove her point.

How could this young woman know that? Who is she? And, after Duncan goes incognito and meets at the baseball stadium, who is this other guy pointing a gun at the President of the United States?

THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING clocks in at over 500 pages, but they read extremely fast. Duncan’s prose is all in first person and the entire novel is written in the present tense, giving it an urgency. Having Duncan narrate his own scenes is great, especially with his asides when he gives details you know came from Bill Clinton’s memories. There are other characters and all those scenes are related in third person. It’s the first time I can remember reading a book like this. Granted, as a writer, I noticed the differences at first, but as the story went on and my reading speed increased, it faded away and I was solely in the action.

By now, Patterson is a master at crafting a story and, while I’ve read few, I could see how one of his stories is made. And I really loved how the tension was racketed up. Sure, there were lots of cliffhanger chapter endings, but this is a summer thriller. It’s supposed to have cliffhangers.

And there was one passage of about five chapters that completely fooled me. I thought one thing was happening and it was something else entirely. Much like watching “The Sixth Sense” a second time when you know the truth, I re-read those chapters just to see how Patterson did it. Brilliant. Also brilliant was the skillful way Patterson kept the truth behind the traitor and other characters, revealing their identity at precisely the right time. This guy can tell stories!

I purchased this book from my local grocery store and I pointed out something to some friends who noticed the book in my basket. I indicated all the other Patterson novels on display—eight?—and then at THE PRESIDENT IS MISSING. Patterson’s name was listed on top of all save the new one. It takes a president’s name to shift Patterson to second billing.

I very much enjoyed this book and would easily recommend it as a good beach read.