Defiance County - Softcover

Jay Brandon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0451196244 ISBN 13: 9780451196248

Publisher: Signet Books, 1997

Synopsis

To penetrate the mystery of a double murder and kidnapping in a small Texas town, prosecutor Kelsey Thatch will have to unearth a shocking secret--one that could destroy the town forever.

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Even after she's fled criminal law for a safe berth in the Texas Attorney General's Office--after impugning her own witness when she doubted an identification--Kelsey Thatch is condemned to the courtroom once again when her boss sends her to cozy Galilee to try Billy Fletcher, general manager of Smoothskins, the town's only reason for existing, for killing his sister-in-law and her husband and kidnapping the only witness to the crime, their five- month-old daughter. Despite the usual obstacles--small-town hostility, insufficient investigative help, no leads on the missing baby, no warmth from Smoothskins matriarch Alice Beaumont, no support from local D.A. Morgan Fletcher, Billy's brother, or the presiding judge, Morgan's old flame, and a circumstantial case that seems to grow weaker with every one of Kelsey's own witnesses--she manages the usual amazing successes: putting Billy's alibi witnesses on the defensive, outdueling Billy's lawyer in closing arguments, getting her own investigator to fall for her, and winning just the verdict she wants. Or does she? Though the ripely murderous Beaumont-Fletcher family ought to be as entertaining as the Borgias, Brandon's did-he-or-didn't- he scenario is too schematic to give them much breathing room. Even the courtroom cut-and-thrust--a trademark of Brandon's Lone Star thrillers (Local Rules, 1995, etc.)--is tired this time. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

An unexpected twist energizes this exemplary legal thriller: the reader is thrown right into the middle of the story, along with special prosecutor Kelsey Thatch, when she arrives in Galilee, Tex., to investigate a double murder and a kidnapping in which the main suspect, Billy Fletcher, is the brother of Galilee District Attorney Morgan Fletcher. Like many small-town crime novels, this one features a tangle of family relationships, as well as a matriarch who runs the place?here, the imposing Alice Beaumont, who owns the factory that dominates Galilee. Beaumont's daughter Lorrie was one of the murder victims; her granddaughter Taylor is missing; her daughter Katherine is Morgan Fletcher's wife, and so the accused's sister-in-law?which, in Beaumont's mind, gives her more than enough right to tell Kelsey how to run her prosecution. But there are many skeletons in the Beaumont family closet, and Kelsey discovers them in a series of revelations that draws the reader inexorably into an increasingly complicated plot. While the solution to the murder/kidnapping doesn't quite balance the buildup, all the other plot elements are well matched, from the skeleton in Kelsey's own closet to her romance with a police assistant who may or may not be trustworthy. Ex-DA Brandon (Local Rules) shines in the trial scenes, and throughout infuses vitality into an overworked genre.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Signet Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0451196244
• ISBN 13: 9780451196248
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480