Publisher's Weekly Review
In Burke's absorbing third Samantha Kincaid mystery (after 2004's Missing Justice), the 32-year-old deputy DA and her just-moved-in lover, Det. Chuck Forbes, look into the murder of Percy Crenshaw, a popular investigative reporter and liaison to the Portland, Ore., minority community, who's found bludgeoned to death after a protest over a police shooting with racial overtones. Careful scrutiny of video footage unearths a couple of meth-headed hoodlums who were in the right place at the right time for the crime. Chuck's partner elicits a confession, and the case seems wrapped. When the ill-gotten confession is deemed inadmissable, the wavering line between loyalty to Chuck and Samantha's prosecutorial integrity becomes the catalyst for a breakup. Meanwhile, budding journalist Heidi Hatmaker, eager to break into the crime beat, studies Crenshaw's cryptic notes and surmises that the reporter's recent surveillance of questionable police activity may have led to his demise. A former deputy DA herself, Burke confidently lays out the procedural details, but she's less sure at rendering complex personal relationships. Agent, Philip Spitzer. (July 6) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Usually, district attorneys and cops play well together; they're both on the same team, after all, trying to rid the streets of crime. But something's gone awry in Portland, Oregon, and Deputy DA Samantha Kincaid finds herself in the middle of a very ugly political battle. Samantha is called to the scene of a brutal murder--the victim being Percy Crenshaw, a well-known investigative reporter. Tension in the DA's office is already high, thanks to a shooting in which a Portland cop, with less than reasonable cause, killed a young mother. An arrest comes quickly in the Crenshaw case, but then one of the suspects recants his confession, claiming police brutality. The deeper Samantha digs, the more cops--including, potentially, her live-in boyfriend--turn on her, and the more it looks like the fix is in. Burke, daughter of author James Lee Burke and once a Portland prosecutor herself, delivers a politically charged, gritty thriller in this third entry in the Samantha Kincaid series. --Mary Frances Wilkens Copyright 2005 Booklist
Kirkus Review
Burke hits her stride in this third outing for Deputy District Attorney Samantha Kincaid. Is Portland suffering through a crime wave? Two weeks after Officer Geoffrey Hamilton puts seven bullets through Delores Tompkins's windshield after she flees a late-night traffic stop, hotshot Oregonian reporter Percy Crenshaw is beaten to death in the parking lot of his own apartment complex. Samantha's boyfriend, Det. Chuck Forbes, and his partner Mike Calabrese swiftly extract a confession from hopped-up Todd Corbett, who under Mike's aggressive questioning gives up Trevor Hanks as the friend whose baseball bat was caught by security cameras. But the sudden illness of Samantha's boss Russell Frist, which catapults her into taking Geoff Hamilton's case before a grand jury, marks a turning point in her fortunes. First the slam-dunk Hamilton indictment slips away, then Corbett's confession goes south. As Samantha and Chuck battle over who ought to trust whom, Crenshaw's junior Oregonian colleague Heidi Hatmaker, hungry for respect, puzzles over the notes he left behind and, in awkwardly interspersed third-person chapters, discloses a pattern that'll tie virtually all Samantha's felonies together. After a slow start: big, bustling canvas with plausible moral dilemmas for Samantha (Missing Justice, 2004, etc.) and surprises that are still popping on the final pages. Now that she's mastered the high concept and the breadth, maybe next time Burke can deliver the pace and momentum that would raise her to the first rank. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
District Attorney Samantha Kincaid (Judgment Calls; Missing Justice) returns in this twisty tale of law and order. A white police officer, Geoffrey Hamilton, shoots an African American woman to death during a routine traffic stop, bringing some stepped-up racial tension to Portland politics. Then local hero Percy Crenshaw, an Oregonian newspaper reporter, is bludgeoned to death in his own driveway the same night the race riots heat up. After two young men are caught on television doing some damage with a baseball bat, Samantha's new live-in boyfriend, Detective Chuck Forbes, watches his partner, Detective Mike Calabrese, wrangle a confession to the Crenshaw murder out of one of the boys, using questionable methods at best. Samantha has to deal with the suspicious shooting and the quasiconfession, which causes Chuck to wonder where her loyalties lie. Meanwhile, junior reporter Heidi Hatmaker is trying to put together a story for herself from Crenshaw's notes but is unwittingly endangering everyone involved. Burke's first-person narration works beautifully, but alternating it with the occasional third-person narration for the Hatmaker story line feels awkward in this otherwise superb legal thriller. Highly recommended for all popular fiction collections. [See Prepub Mystery, LJ 3/1/05.]-Stacy Alesi, Palm Beach Cty. Lib. Syst., Boca Raton, FL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
