Death Row

Rating:
Summary: Good guys finish first
Review: Oklahoma attorney, Ben Kincaid, is back. This time he is trying to win a reprieve for a death row prisoner whose case he lost seven years earlier. Time is not on Ben's side.

Industrial chemist, Ray Goldman was convicted of a the brutal slaying of a fellow coworker's entire family, except a fifteen year old daughter who was left to die chained to the basement floor. The daughter survived the ordeal and was the star witness in the prosecution case. Seven years has passed, now Erin Faulkner wants to recant her testimony. Before she is able to do so to anyone but Ben, she is murdered.

Ben Kincaid is a do-gooder at heart. He likes to help the downtrodden and the helpless. He is always one step away form bankruptcy. He is really an anti-lawyer kind of lawyer and a very likable character. The first chapter of this book was very graphic and extremely hard to read. The plot itself was suspenseful and a lot of twists to it. There was a good secondary story between homicide detective partners, Mike Morelli and Kate Baxter. Overall, a good book that sometimes got a little too preachy about the fast food industry. Fast food lovers beware-this might not be the book for you.

Rating:
Summary: Ben Kincaid tries to stop an execution.
Review: The hero of William Bernhardt's Ben Kincaid novels is a socially inept but legally astute Oklahoma criminal defense attorney. Traditionally, a Ben Kincaid novel features a great deal of cutesy banter and coy behavior on the part of Ben and his wacky office staff. There is still some of that in "Death Row," but this book proves to be much more harrowing and serious than the usual Bernhardt fare.

The first chapter of "Death Row" is frightening and disturbing. The reader is immediately plunged into an apparent home invasion in which a family is brutally tortured and murdered, with one survivor desperately trying to break free before she too is killed. We then fast forward seven years later to the trial of Ray Goldman, who is convicted and sentenced to die for the killing of the aforementioned family. Ben Kincaid is handling Goldman's case. With the help of his good friend and law partner, Christina McCall, Ben desperately tries to postpone the execution so that he can find evidence that will exonerate his client.

There is an entertaining subplot featuring Major Mike Morelli, Ben's former brother-in-law. Morelli is a homicide detective who is forced to pair up with a new partner, a woman who is as irritating as she is beautiful. Morelli and his partner get embroiled in Ben's case when several women connected with the investigation are found dead, both apparent suicides. Did these women really kill themselves or were they murdered?

The plot thickens as Ben, Mike and their colleagues dig deeper and deeper to get at the truth of what really happened seven years ago. "Death Row" is an absorbing and hard-hitting thriller with many surprising twists and turns. The book is fast-paced and the humor is appropriately restrained considering the subject matter of the novel. I do have one or two quibbles, however. There are several coincidences in the book that make little sense. In addition, as in his previous books, Bernhardt persists in having Ben and Christina relate emotionally to one another like lovesick teenagers. It would be nice to see these two behave like mature adults. Still "Death Row" is one of the best Ben Kincaid novels that Bernhardt has written in years and I recommend it.

Rating:
Summary: No wonder this poor guy spent 7 years on death row
Review: This is a book that legal-murder-crime-mystery writers salivate over. A book that grabs the reader by the throat from the first dozen pages, and continues to shake them. Can't put it down. Got to see if Ray Goldman, the brilliant chemist who has a hobby, yes, of being a gourmet cook on the side, is really guilty. Guilty of murder most foul, the slaughter of an innocent family.

Then we float into the arena of . . . golly, this doesn't make too much sense. People don't talk that way; You can't hide evidence from defense lawyers . . . ever; People don't rise to great heights who are sexist, painfully shy, impotent to act in their personal lives, buffoons.

Ray is convicted on the testimony of the sole survivor of the Faulkner family massacre, 15 year old Erin Faulkner. Seems she identified the voice of the masked assailant/psychopath, and it's Goldman. This catches the shy but brilliant attorney Ben Kincaid unawares because the evidence has never been turned over to the defense. Now granted, we readers aren't brilliant jurists but this is reversible error. This is mistrial city. This is prosecutorial misconduct. Makes no difference. Ray is sentenced to be executed.

Ray faces legal injection but doesn't want Ben interviewing his ex-girlfriend . . . .whom no one has ever interviewed. This seems odd. At least tell us that one of the troika, the cops, the DA or the Defense interviewed her. But no, like the lineup evidence, no one asked.

Mike Morelli, close friend of Ben's and in his own right a brilliant detective, attends the crime scene of Erin Faulkner's death hours after she tells Ben that she didn't really "know" it was Ray Goldman behind the ski mask, and Morelli concludes it was definitely . . . a suicide.

Morelli's relationship with Lisa Baxter, his beautiful partner, and for that matter Kincaid's relationship with Christina, his partner, is straight out of school . . . .Middle School. They are childish, foolish, tedious, and make you want to turn the page.

Ultimately great plot, a couple of nicely crafted surprises, poor dialogue. Larry Scantlebury. Three stars.