Dark Lady

Rating:
Summary: Grime & Punishment
Review: A lot can be said making it all seem real, or based on elements that mirror the culture. I guess that's one way to describe absorption and recycling of this and that from here and there in fact and fiction.

In Patterson's beautiful hometown San Francisco (unlike drab, uninteresting fictional(?) Steelton), real life embattled Black hero Mayor Willie Brown was and is embroiled in a conflict to save 3Com Park's Bayview Stadium project, but, unlike Patterson's mayor in the story, aligned on the "pro" side against some elements which would unseat SF from its status as a world class city.

WE'LL MEET AGAIN's Molly Lasch was the accused in the murder of an ex. Patterson's Stella faces crisis growing out of the killing of one of her ex-squeezes. "Similar, but not?"

Except for complexion and branch of public service Dark Lady Marz could be a clone of the less pedestrian Kay Scarpetta of BLACK NOTICE and previous installments.

Even components clearly of Patterson's creation are burdened with what could pass for - as it says, "the hard edge of reality." It's like reading a documentary.

The best fiction shrouds within a gossamer semi-reality that even intrudes to the level of fantasy once credibility is expendable. A prime case of the latter is the masterpiece FIELD OF DREAMS. A marginal example is DANCES WITH WOLVES, wherein a person's imagination indulges the unlikely behavior and logic of the animals. An in-between is A CAT'S FULL NINE, that challenges your grasp of what is chance/coincidence and how much is just beyond touch and just within the charms and palls of ancient forces that impel - if not compel - the perameters of an explosive and exquisite tale.

Even a rough jolt like HANNIBAL communicates implicitly the presence of a tongue in a cheek back there somewhere. A person reads for escape. Escape to a different level of reality - even if it's a made up one - doesn't make it.

Rating:
Summary: The maestro has done it againn-great thriller
Review: In the late nineteenth century, Steelton, located where the Onondaga flows into Lake Erie, was a booming factory town that hosted the region's top steel manufacturing industry. Today, the steel industry is gone and the city remains depressed even though some urban improvement has occurred.

A debate has broken out among the politicians over whether to construct a modern baseball park for the Steelton Blues, whose franchise in the city is nearing the century mark. Mayor Krajek sees the stadium as something good for the community, especially minority workers. His opponent in the mayoral race, Arthur Bright, condemns the project as a waste of public funds needed elsewhere. However, the controversy on Steelton 2000 turns ugly. The supervisor of the project Tommy Fielding of the Hall Development Company and a Mafia lawyer influential in the project Jack Novak are found dead. Though Jack was once her lover, Assistant County Prosecutor Stella Marz leads the investigation that she thinks should be considered two homicides. Stella and the police weed through layers of deception, corruption, and avarice trying to resolve the double mystery.

DARK LADY is Richard North Patterson's best tale to date as he paints a vivid yet depressing picture of a midwest city. The story line is entertaining as the driven Stella does everything to uncover the truth. Stella's obsession feels genuine and the support cast augments the tale by making Steelton seem like a real American city. The plot suffers from the real success stories of Jacobs Field and Cameron Yards, and from a not-to-believe villain. Still, fans will feel the passions as a debate occurs when a city decides whether to construct a new stadium.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: Politics, Murder, and Strange Bedfellows
Review: Richard North Patterson's latest, Dark Lady, is a well-crafted lawyer-cop-political tale which will hold your interest. The protagonist is Stella Marz, a single, 38-year old Assistant County Prosecutor who wants not to be the assistant. But that means she would have to be the first woman elected to the job. Her boss is running for mayor, but if he is elected will he back her or his long-time friend and political ally in the special election? The political environment in this rust-belt metropolis is complex, with the electorate fairly evenly split between African-American and the children of Central European immigrants. Stella is a tough, competent prosecutor who seldom loses and whose dedication and tough stance has earner her the sobriquet of "Dark Lady." Patterson deftly brings out Stella's background and its effect on her current viewpoint. A reader comes to know her and the difficulties she surmounted to reach what might have become the critical point in both her career and her life. Dark Lady may not be a great book, but it is a story well told.

Rating:
Summary: The Dark Lady is One Tough Cookie
Review: Steelton is a fictional American Midwest town on the shores of Lake Erie, where the proposed construction of a two hundred and seventy-five million dollar baseball stadium is the background for a political battle. Mayor Tom Krajek hails the proposal as the hallmark of a new era of urban renewal. The Prosecuter of Erie County, Arthur Bright, calls it a boondoggle, saying the money would be better spent elsewhere.

Bright's ally in his attempt to unseat the mayor is his protégé, Stella Marz, dubbed the "Dark Lady" by defence lawyers, who don't take kindly to her aggressive style and relentless pursuit of convictions. Stella's latched onto Bright's coattails, so she has a real interest in his political future.

Things turn nasty when Tommy Fielding, the project manager of the stadium, is found dead with a hooker, both of an apparant heroin overdose. However Chief Detective Nathaniel Dance suspects more than just foul play, particularly when Stella's ex-lover and Bright supporter Jack Novak is also found dead, castrated and hanging in his closet, dressed in a garter belt and stockings. It's of no small significance that Jack was a Mob lawyer.

Though her relationship with Novak is long over, Stella can't help but feel the collision of her personal and professional lives at the crime scene. But she hangs tough, partly because it's her nature, but also because she has is a political animal. She wants to be the first woman prosecutor of Erie County, after all. And for her to reach that goal, Arthur Bright has to win the Democratic primary against incumbent Mayor Thomas Krajek.

Is there a connection between the Fielding and Novak murders? Where does the stadium construction belong in all of this? Can Stella draw the threads together? In answering these questions you'll find that you have the makings of a good thriller, but wait, there's more, add a some greed and corruption, a whole lot of double-dealing and back-stabbing and you've added the fixings of a blockbuster.

Rating:
Summary: Good but not Great
Review: This book was enjoyable reading even though some parts dragged out more than necessary. The cast of characters were somewhat confusing but it was all brought together nicely in the end. There were some interesting twists and story lines within the book.