Cold Justice - Softcover

Jacobs, Jonnie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0786015438 ISBN 13: 9780786015436

Publisher: Pinnacle Books, 2003

Synopsis

After the brutal murder of her best friend, which bears a startling resemblance to the victims of the Bayside Strangler, who was recently executed, San Francisco lawyer Kali O'Brien fears that the wrong man was sentenced to death and must re-open a case thought to be solved in order to catch the real killer. Reprint.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Dwayne Davis, aka the Bayside Strangler, has been dead for a year when Anne Bailey, a defense lawyer formerly on the prosecution team that got Davis the death penalty, is killed in the Strangler's signature style. Anne's law partner, Kali O'Brien, was also involved in the Davis case and notifies her former boss, San Francisco DA Owen Nelson, of the similarities. Nelson fears that bad press could derail his run for governor and persuades Kali to rejoin the payroll and run the case to forestall cover-up charges. She soon has her hands full as the bodies pile up, and she must deal with woman-hating cop Lou Fortune, creepy stalker Nathan Sloane and a growing suspicion that she could be next on the killer's list. A romantic attraction to Lou's partner, Det. Bryce Keating, further complicates affairs. Former attorney Jacobs (Witness for the Defense) has a magic touch with characters from sleazy Mission Street hoods to political power brokers. Clues sometimes give away too much too soon, but menacing red herrings and Technicolor personalities pace the woman-in-peril plot and sharpen the suspense. The author pulls off the neat trick of featuring a lawyer protagonist in a character-driven police procedural that never sees the inside of a courtroom. This is a smash installment in a popular series that is easy to relate to and relentlessly entertaining.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

San Francisco attorney Kali O'Brien helped prosecute the Bayside Strangler, a serial killer who terrorized Oakland women. Eight years later, the Strangler has been executed, Kali is a defense attorney, and her colleague on the case is now running for governor. Then Kali's friend, Anne, is killed in a manner identical to the Strangler's M.O., and another, similar murder follows quickly. Kali agrees to return to the D.A.'s office to determine if the current killings are the work of a copycat or if the wrong man was executed. As a pattern begins to emerge, Kali realizes that she is the next target. Jacobs' fifth Kali O'Brien novel is the best of a steadily improving series. The pace is fast, the mystery is difficult to solve, the twisting plot delivers frequent adrenaline jolts, and the characters are uniformly well developed. The dark Bay Area settings will remind readers of Julie Smith and Marcia Muller but also of John Lescroart. John Rowen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About this edition

• Publisher: Pinnacle Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0786015438
• ISBN 13: 9780786015436
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• Number of pages: 416