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Summary
Author Notes
Barbara Parker was born in Columbia, South Carolina on January 28, 1947. She studied drama at the University of South Florida. Before graduation she switched her major to history and then went to law school at the University of Miami. She worked as a prosecutor in the state attorney's office in Miami and then went into private practice. She also received a master's degree in creative writing from Florida International University (Miami).
Initially, she began writing stories for her son, but it soon became a hobby and eventually her new career. Her first mystery, Suspicion of Innocence, was published in 1994 and became a CBS Movie of the Week entitled Sisters and Other Strangers. She wrote 12 novels during her lifetime including Blood Relations, Criminal Justice, The Dark of Day, and the Suspicion series. She died on March 7, 2009 at the age of 62.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Though a legal thriller, the action in Parker's first-rate latest (after Blood Relations) focuses not on the courtroom but on the sultry streets of Miami, where Parker shows how the end justifies the means not just for the bad guys but, too often, for the good guys as well. Refusing to put a lying witness on the stand in a major drug case has cost attorney Dan Galindo his job as a federal prosecutor, shattered his marriage and earned him the wrath of DEA agent Vincent Hooper. Broke and reduced to taking cases referred by his music producer ex-brother-in-law Rick Robbins, Dan hooks up with keyboard player Martha Cruz, a bandmate of Dan's current girlfriend, Kelly Dorf, who has been arrested for hitting a Miami cop. Martha, Dan soon discovers, is involved with Rick's very silent partner, Ecuadorian "businessman" Miguel Salazar. Miguel is determined to make Martha a star-a goal shared by the ambitious Martha and by Rick, who's desperate to finally produce a hit group. But the DEA is after Miguel, a major drug smuggler, for laundering money through Rick's company. Unbeknownst to Dan, Kelly, with a cocaine trafficking charge hanging over her head, is working as their informant. When Dan breaks up with Kelly, she retaliates by telling the DEA she overheard him talking with Miguel about the money laundering. Parker, herself a former Miami prosecutor, throws the steak of real experience on the fire of Miami and lets it sizzle. 60,000 first printing; author tour. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Parker's latest Miami lawyer-in-distress is Daniel Galindo, Esq., who gets mangled in a DEA undercover operation against his lovers and relatives. After months of hard work, Operation Manatee is ready for the big push against Miguel Salazar and the associates he's bullied into letting him use Mayhem, an up-and-coming band, to launder millions in heroin cash. DEA agent-in-charge Vincent Hooper and assistant US prosecutor Elaine McHale, who just happen to be lovers, have placed an undercover agent and turned a reluctant informer inside Coral Rock Productions. Very nice for them--but not so nice for Dan Galindo, Elaine's former colleague at the federal attorney's office, whose life has been in a tailspin ever since he refused to suborn perjury in an earlier drug case. Divorced from his wife Lisa, Dan's still friendly with Lisa's brother Rick Robbins, Mayhem's manager, and even friendlier with Mayhem guitarist Kelly Dorff, not realizing that she's Manatee's informant. Struggling to be a father to his son Josh, Dan allows Salazar to lend him his yacht for a fishing trip--and finds himself slipping even further into the bad guys' pockets. Although there are undeniable compensations--at diverse times Dan enjoys romantic scenes with Kelly, with Lisa, with ambitious Mayhem vocalist Martha Cruz, and even with Elaine--they vanish when Kelly's killed at Dan's apartment, shot with his own speargun. If Dan didn't do it--and Elaine's ready to provide him with an alibi--who did? There's a surprising answer, but you may have forgotten all about it in the storm over (1) the quest for an incriminating audiotape; (2) Dan's domestic dilemmas; (3) Rick's entanglement with monstrous Salazar; (4) the fate of Mayhem, whose members should check their insurance policies; and (5) the infighting among all those feds. Nobody plots more generously than Parker (Blood Relations, 1996, etc.), but this time, with enough menace for a whole season of Miami Vice, the result is so unfocused that it's exhausting instead of dramatic. (First printing of 60,000; author tour)
Library Journal Review
In this latest from the popular author of Suspicion of Guilt (LJ 2/1/95), a failed prosecutor hits bottom when he is charged with murdering his girlfriend, a rock guitarist who could be a DEA informant. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
