Methods of Execution - Softcover

Huebner, Frederick D.

3.56

9 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0449149390 ISBN 13: 9780449149393

Publisher: Fawcett, 1995

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"A hard-edged, absorbing story with shocking twists."
--The Sunday Oregonian
Robert Polhaus abuses women for his own sexual gratification. That violent history helps convict him of murdering two prostitutes, putting him on death row as a serial killer.
"A thought-provoking story expertly written and fused with the twists and turns of an imaginative suspense/thriller."
--Mystery News
Seattle lawyer Matthew Riordan hoped to leave law forever, but returns when his ex-girlfriend, attorney Elizabeth Kleinfeldt, shares her startling conviction that Polhaus was unjustly convicted. Now Riordan is appealing the sentence of the ice-hearted criminal.
"Nail-gnawing suspense...Startling and wholly unpredictable events erupt regularly."
--Lexington Herald-Leader
To find answers, Riordan sinks fast into the shadowy scene of sex for sale and cold-blooded corruption--to discover a murderer whose methods are even more chilling than those of Riordan's client....
"A well written, well-constructed legal mystery...Surprising twists... Deft characterization and plotting."
--Publishers Weekly

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From Kirkus Reviews:

His former lover Elizabeth Kleinfeldt drags self-exiled Seattle lawyer Matthew Riordan (Picture Postcard, 1990) back into the ring to investigate the slim chance that her client, death-row inmate Robert Polhaus, isn't really the Motel Room Killer who strangled three hookers four years before. Though Polhaus is no model citizen, the case against him stinks to high heaven: The police never bothered to look for two witnesses Polhaus said he saw at the third crime scene; all three victims had passed through Dreams, an escort service run by plausible but sadistic Larry Poole; a therapist who'd been treating all three of them hanged himself hours after the third body was discovered; and the third victim's john book, which the police never found, implicates everybody from an investigating county cop to a local newspaper columnist to the judge who heard prostitution cases against all three. But just when Liz seems to be close to the smoking gun, she's killed, and her raised-eyebrow law firm is determined to run grieving Riordan off the case. Dense, turbulent, and just sleazy enough for the squeamish. The final revelation, though, may be one surprise too many. -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

In the fifth Matt Riordan novel, a well-written, well-constructed legal mystery, Huebner ( Picture Postcard ) sets his Seattle lawyer on a cold trail of evidence littered with betrayals of both private lives and professional principles. Riordan's old lover, Liz Kleinfeldt, asks him to help her get a stay of execution for Robert Polhaus, the so-called Motel Room Killer. Something about Polhaus's conviction for a series of rapes and murders smells wrong to Liz, even though the murders stopped after he was caught. Raking over the case history, Riordan discovers that the victims were connected to the same escort service; further evidence, suggesting that some powerful and protected people might have wanted these women dead, leads to another killing. Riordan's investigation builds up complex currents of suspense as each of the major characters in this tale, which focuses on the past, plumbs his or her own troubled personal history. Surprising twists in the story lead to a payoff that, while holding up to scrutiny, nevertheless seems a little weak, especially following the deft characterization and plotting that led up to it.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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