Posted by Leslie Pratch; written by Mark Johnson
“Suspicion of Madness” is the seventh “Suspicion of…” novel by Barbara Parker featuring attorneys Gail Connor and Anthony Quintana.
They’re in the Florida Keys this time, working for a 19-year-old who is accused of killing a young woman and then attempting suicide. Anthony represented this guy four years earlier in an arson case and won. Was that, he wonders now, good?
Billy Fadden may or may not be a killer, but he’s a head case. As Gail and Anthony untangle the skeins of an old family mystery, they find out that he’s not alone. I haven’t seen so much insanity since “Hamlet.”
Half the fun is the amorous bickering of the protagonists, who are mismatched but white-hot in love. They argue like real people, sometimes cute and sometimes cutting. When Anthony insists that Billy is innocent, Gail thinks he’s justifying his own actions of four years ago: “He has an alibi.”“Maybe.” Gail waited, then said, “But you don’t ]know, do you? You don’t, and it’s going to eat at you, and you’ll start being brooding and worrying and be impossible to live with, and we’ll both suffer.”
“Do you think I want to know if my clients are guilty or not? … I don’t care about that. Anyway, the truth is hard to hold on to. You think you have it, and then it bites you. I don’t even ask.”
“Who are you lying to, me or yourself?”
Ouch. The wedding is set for June. Will it come off?
This review was originally published in the San Jose Mercury Times.
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Leslie Pratch, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist from Northwestern University with an M.B.A. in Strategy and Finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and a B.A. in Religion from Williams College. She works with boards of directors and private equity investors to select and develop executives. She can be reached at (312) 464-7919, leslie@pratchco.com, or visit her at www.pratchco.com.
Mark Johnson is a retired book reviewer for the San Jose Mercury Times.
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