Daylight (Atlee Pine #3) by David Baldacci

 

Daylight (Atlee Pine #3) by David Baldacci finds FBI Agent Atlee Pine searching for her twin sister Mercy which brings Pine into the middle of Army Investigator John Puller’s drug ring case, which means anything can and will happen.

Mercy was kidnapped when the girls were six years old, and Pine has the best lead so far in finding out the identity of the kidnapper, Ito Vincenzo. In New Jersey trying to piece the clues together, Pine and Puller probe the connection between their cases.

Will Pine find Mercy? Will Puller close his case? These questions and much more will be answered in Daylight.

David Baldacci published his first novel, Absolute Power, in 1996, and it became a popular movie starring Clint Eastwood. Baldacci, a former lawyer, has published another 40 novels for grownups since Absolute Power.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting October 30, 2020.

I’d like to thank Grand Central Publishing, the Hatchette Book Group, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

Atticus Finch by Joseph Crespino

 

Atticus Finch by Joseph Crespino is the “biography” of the father character in the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. Crespino explains how Atticus came to be modeled after A.C. Lee, Harper Lee’s lawyer-turned-newspaperman father.  Crespino gives many behind the scene details regarding the making of the film in Hollywood as well.

He also discusses the later-found work, Go Set a Watchman, in which a totally different persona was developed for Atticus. Rather than scorn it, he says the book shows how Lee was conflicted about how she wanted to portray her father in literature. Lee was crafting her work in a historical period of militant segregation politics at that time in the South, and she was trying to make sense of how her father fit into the scheme of things.

In this scholarly work, Crespino shares his insider’s look at letters and documents that were made available to him, some from private collections, as well as his conversations with three grandchildren of Lee’s father, her own nieces and a nephew. With his background in history, Crespino is able to put Lee’s work into a social and political history context. Several photographs in the book show a more flattering Harper Lee than the author shots that are usually used.

Fans of Lee and her work will learn much about her life and how it found its way into her writing.

Joseph Crespino, the Jimmy Carter Professor of History at Emory University, is an expert in the political and cultural history of the twentieth century United States, and of the history of the American South since Reconstruction. 

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting October 30, 2020.

I would like to thank Basic Books, an imprint of Perseus Books, a subsidiary of Hatchette Book Group, Inc., and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

The Three Mrs. Wrights vy Linda Keir

 The Three Mrs. Wrights by Linda Keir is another story of a man who can never have enough women in his life. Jon, Jack, Tripp--whatever you want to call him, keeps adding women to his stable that includes Holly, his wife; Jessica, his newest employee, and Lark, a woman he met in a bar.

It’s easy to predict that the women will all find out about each other, and Jon, Jack, Tripp--whoever will go down. Yawn. Short on plot, thin on character.

The writing team of Linda Joffe Hull and Keir Graff make up the pen name of Linda Keir.

My review will be posted on Goodreads starting October 15, 2020.

I would like to thank Lake Union Publishing, a trademark of Amazon.com, and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC in return for an objective review.

The Librarian of Boone's Hollow by Kim Vogel Sawyer

 The Librarian of Boone's Hollow by Kim Vogel Sawyer is a lightweight entry into the subject area of fictional packhorse librarians. With Kim Michele Richardson and Jojo Moyes duking it out for the best of the genre in 2019, Sawyer journeys into the mining towns of Kentucky for her entry.

Set during the Great Depression, the protagonist, Adelaide Cowherd, is just about finished with her college year only to be told she is expelled because her parents have failed to pay the college. A part-time worker at the Lexington Library, she learns of a job on horseback delivering books. 

Boone’s Hollow folk are suspicious of strangers and have their prejudices and superstitions causing them to reject Addie as a packhorse librarian. She does have one friend in town whom she met in college, Emmett Tharp. With a degree in business, he has not been able to find a job now that he has graduated until the director of the Boone’s Hollow Packhorse Library must leave the area due to her asthma.

A love triangle soon emerges as an illiterate town girl wants to put her hooks into Tharp while he prefers college-educated Addie, who longs to be a writer with her own books on library shelves. Before long, someone has menaced with the library program and has stolen Addie’s documents.

Kim Vogel Sawyer released her first book in 2006, Waiting for Summer's Return. A former teacher, Sawyer now writes full time and has a speaking ministry.

A Time for Mercy by John Grisham

 John Grisham like I love John Grisham is back with A Time for Mercy, in which Jake Brigance is once again the main character. This time he is tackling another justified killing if only the court would see it that way. Unfortunately, the victim was a deputy sheriff, and there’s not a lot of sympathy in Clanton, Mississippi, for the 16-year-old killer, his mother, and his sister.

Already extremely busy with a case involving wrongful death of a family that was killed in an auto vs train accident, Jake does not want another capital murder case. He agrees only because the judge wants him to take the case, and it is the same judge in the pending wrongful death suit. Once again Jake finds himself at odds with the town and especially law enforcement officers who support one of their own, even though many knew some unsavory things about the victim.

The ending of the book seems to leave the door open to a sequel, and fans of Grisham will hope so as we cannot get enough of Jake Brigance.

John Grisham, a lawyer, started his writing career in 1988 with A Time to Kill, in which he introduced Jake Brigance. Several of his books have been adapted for movies, and he has said he wants Matthew McConaughey to portray Jake once again. No once writes a better trial procedural than Grisham in this reviewer’s opinion.

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