Spare Change - Hardcover

Peak, John A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312110715 ISBN 13: 9780312110710

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1994

When Jeff Talbot, an alcoholic lawyer, discovers that the young woman with whom he spent the night has been murdered, he is determined to find the killers before they find him

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From Kirkus Reviews:

Jeff Talbot, a Louisiana trial lawyer with a penchant for booze, arrives in San Francisco dreaming of big-city success in Peak's first mystery. He ends up instead sharing a bottle and a sleeping bag with a woman who is knifed to death while they lie passed out in a public park. Katy DiAnuncio, the cop who questions him, has more than a professional interest in the case; the victim was her sister Colleen. After Katy rescues him from suddenly dangerous streets, Jeff agrees to take a job in the law firm where Colleen was employed, hoping to find some clues to her murder. His path crosses that of Peter St. John, one of the firm's founding partners, when it becomes known that the dead woman was a witness in a malpractice suit recently filed against Peter's surgeon son. Various other complications are revealed: A senator has been killed, drugs were stolen and sold, someone has been dumping nuclear waste in the Marianas Trench. In the midst of this intrigue, a major earthquake strikes the city, obliging Katy to take time out from her investigation to perform various acts of heroism. Perhaps the same earthquake shook all the ends loose from this mystery. Unfinished subplots and outrageous coincidences mar a story that begins well and features an entertaining prose style. -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

Successfully taking a few daunting narrative risks in his smashing first novel, a medical malpractice defense lawyer tells a compelling tale of murder and corruption. Two engaging attorneys serve as protagonists, each one fascinating and distinctive enough on his own to keep the reader hooked. Newly arrived in San Francisco, Jeff Talbot, a down-and-out lawyer and borderline alcoholic, decides to sleep in the park among the homeless. He awakens, deeply hung over, to find his female companion murdered and himself wounded and is plunged into a deadly game in which he is stalked by unknown assailants. Peter St. John, on the other hand, is a retired, successful malpractice specialist who breeds horses. When his doctor son is sued for malpractice, he returns to the firm he founded, now unexpectedly financially troubled, to find out why the charge against his son is getting so much attention. The cases intertwine, leading finally to two brutal murders and a bloody shoot-out at St. John's ranch. Peak turns up the tension even further by setting his story at the time of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake. The villainy may turn out to be somewhat more grandiose than what the reader is prepared for, but all in all, this debut is both promising and accomplished.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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