Posted by Leslie Pratch; written by Mark Johnson This entry reviews two related books. They are “Freedom Rising: Washington in the Civil War” by Ernest B. Furgurson and “American Brutus: John Wilkes Booth and the Lincoln Conspiracies” by Michael W. Kauffman. It takes daring to remake a classic, yet that’s what Ernest B. Furgurson has [...]
Posted by Leslie Pratch; written by Mark Johnson John Martel is a Santa Cruz and San Francisco resident, named by the National Law Journal as one of the top 10 trial lawyers in America, brings his expertise to bear in “The Alternate.” He tosses together a high-profile murder case, big-city and California politics, organized crime [...]
Posted by Leslie Pratch; written by Mark Johnson It’s a great title: “Fleur de Leigh’s Life of Crime.” But when I had finished Diane Leslie’s witty, sweet, curiously moving novel, I had to ask myself: What was Fleur’s crime? Let’s start at the beginning. Fleur de (the name is her parents’ little joke—Fleur rejects the [...]
Posted by Leslie Pratch; written by Mark Johnson When I grew up, Buffalo Bill had been dead for half a century. But he was a familiar figure to everyone I knew from television, movies, comic books, and even schoolbooks. What we knew was pretty much what customers of his Wild West Show read in a [...]
Posted by Leslie Pratch; written by Mark Johnson Susan Wiggs’ “The Ocean Between Us” refers both to the sea itself and to half a lifetime of emotional distance and misunderstanding that has grown up between a career military officers and his wife. Grace and Capt. Steve Bennett still love each other. Steve joined the Navy [...]
Posted by Leslie Pratch; written by Mark Johnson At last year’s National Book Awards ceremony, Stephen King included Jodi Picoult in a list of under-appreciated writers. Well, let’s see. Picoult’s recent “Second Glance” was a New York Times best seller; she’s had great reviews in The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Publishers Weekly, USA Today, [...]
Posted by Leslie Pratch; written by Mark Johnson Valerie Danby-Smith was born to a dysfunctional Dublin family in 1940 and spent 14 years in a convent boarding school right out of Charles Dickens. By the time she was 26, she had traveled from Spain to Cuba and New York with Ernest Hemingway, heard his proposal [...]
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 [...]
Posted by Leslie Pratch; written by Mark Johnson Rue Dunwitty, a 29-year-old San Franciscan, has just pulled into tiny Amethyst, Tex., on one of her bittersweet hometown visits when she sees a placard in a store window that shatters her comfortable belief that nothing ever changes here. “Have You Seen Dawn?” it reads, giving this [...]
Posted by Leslie Pratch; written by Mark Johnson “Black Dog” sounds like a villain—maybe one of those nicknames that serial killers are given in novels like this. But it’s not: The black dog is Chicago Det. Lt. Jimmy Parisi’s late-career burnout, the fatigue and frustration of fighting a lifelong war against bad guys that can [...]