Undertow
Sydney Bauer
Berkley, Jul 2008, $7.99
ISBN: 042522290X
To celebrate her daughter Teesha’s seventeenth birthday in style, Boston based attorney Rayna Martin rents a boat to take her teenage child and Teesha’s three musketeer friends (Christina, Mariah and Francie) on a sea trip. However, the happy occasion turns tragic when Christina drowns.
Christina’s father Senator Rudolph Haynes is outraged blaming race for the death of his daughter. He and his child are white Brahmins while the Martins and the other two friends are African-American working class. He pounds the DA into charging Rayna with a race related murder. Rayna hires attorney David Cavanaugh to defend her while her best friend Sara Davis vows to help prove a tragic accident occurred.
Rudolph is overly stereotyped as an ambitious always right manipulative conservative politician rather than a full blooded grieving dad lashing out at the only adult he can; whereas the rest of the cast including the late Christie seem genuine. Stealing the show from a secondary perspective is the victim’s mom who reassesses all she believed in the American dream. Well written, UNDERTOW is an exhilarating legal thriller that turns over the Simpson premise that money can buy the dream team defense as influence can purchase the best prosecution in the world.
Harriet Klausner
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment