Burning Man

Rating:
Summary: HOT STUFF
Review: One has to admire Margolin's ability to take standard characters and situations and mold them into engrossing, suspenseful thrillers. "The Burning Man" is a good example. We meet a spoiled, egocentric, self-centered lawyer named Peter Hale who botches a case for his stricken father, who is so upset with him he fires him from his law firm, disinherits him and ships him off to the boonies of Oregon (guess every state has their own boonies)to work as a public defender. His new boss, Amos Geary, immediately dislikes him, and Peter ends up handling the defense of a mentally retarded man accused of the horrible slaying of a college co-ed. Mixed in with this are a couple of druggies, Christopher Mammon and Kevin Booth. Add a career-minded, unethical female prosecutor, Becky O'Shay, and things heat up. Not to mention Peter's friend, Steve Mancini, and his new wife, Donna, who happens to be the accused's sister. Whew!
At any rate, the plot moves along well, and there are several surprising revelations in the book. And yes, Peter, does become a better man after going through this mess!
Highly enjoyable entertainment.
And I think the title is pretty obvious once the book is ended.
RECOMMENDED.

Rating:
Summary: HOT STUFF
Review: One has to admire Margolin's ability to take standard characters and situations and mold them into engrossing, suspenseful thrillers. "The Burning Man" is a good example. We meet a spoiled, egocentric, self-centered lawyer named Peter Hale who botches a case for his stricken father, who is so upset with him he fires him from his law firm, disinherits him and ships him off to the boonies of Oregon (guess every state has their own boonies)to work as a public defender. His new boss, Amos Geary, immediately dislikes him, and Peter ends up handling the defense of a mentally retarded man accused of the horrible slaying of a college co-ed. Mixed in with this are a couple of druggies, Christopher Mammon and Kevin Booth. Add a career-minded, unethical female prosecutor, Becky O'Shay, and things heat up. Not to mention Peter's friend, Steve Mancini, and his new wife, Donna, who happens to be the accused's sister. Whew!
At any rate, the plot moves along well, and there are several surprising revelations in the book. And yes, Peter, does become a better man after going through this mess!
Highly enjoyable entertainment.
And I think the title is pretty obvious once the book is ended.
RECOMMENDED.

Rating:
Summary: Go grab a Phillip M. Margolin book !!
Review: One of the outstanding legal thriller writer ... go grab a Phillip M. Margolin book and immense yourself with some good twists. The characters and thought provoking messages still lingers around for a while.

Rating:
Summary: A fast read with a good plot
Review: Phillip Margolin is becoming one of my favorite authors, his characters are developed well but not to the extent they are boring. He establishes good continuity and makes you feel that you are part of the story. If you enjoy legal thrillers this is the book for you.

Rating:
Summary: The burning man gets burned
Review: Reading a book was usually challenging for me to do, I could never get myself motivated and ready to read a book such as The Burning Man. This book took a few pages for me to get into it, but after a while I found myself not being able to put it down.The book was a well-written murder mystery, with many different twists in it.
It starts out with Peter being a lawyer in a big time company, which is his dad's law firm. After an incident with his father, Peter thinks he can win the case for his dad's client. Soon after that though his father disowns him in a way. After the stunt he pulled his dad basically disowned him. Peter's first couple nights that he was in the small town of Whitaker were lonely; he wanted a woman around so he tried to meet a few girls since he was in the college town. He finally got to meet with whom he would be working.
His name was Amos Geary, but soon he left him when he met his friend Steve who was a lawyer in the small town also. Peter got a chance to erase his past when he was offered a case that involved a murder suspect. The murder suspect was Gary; he was the son-in-law of Steve. Gary was also mentally handicapped. For some reason Steve wanted Peter to take over this case, which shows why later in the book. Gary was the only suspect, which seemed to be strange at the time. With Steve's wife Donna helping Peter on the case it seemed to open up different leads in the book. With two drug addicts who show up through out the book it seems they could be involved with the murder. Steve was trying to get a big loan for apartments, which would serve as a place for people to stay if they were to represent the Olympics. When plans fall through with the loan, and also new evidence appears it makes for a twist like you could never believe. Though out the story Peter and everyone involved with helping Gary wasn't sure if Gary's brain could think of such a thing as this. In a small town like Whitaker it showed that secrets between high people may pay off in the beginning but with a small atmosphere things will leak out.
The experience I had with this book was good; in other books I could just have put them down and not worried about it. But, this book was different having many different plots to each character made the book more interesting and suspenseful. With many different characters it was hard to keep track of who was who. The author though made a back round for every character and a description of them that helped in the realistic aspect of the book. This was a realistic book I thought for being a fiction book. The case was real and what happens though out the book with people and what they end up doing just seems it could happen anywhere. The language was good at points with swearing happening at the high points in the book, it seemed to fit what would be said in a real situation. This book along with being a murder mystery and a legal thriller, it also had kind of a love story between it. The nice thing about the love aspect of it, it keeps you thinking till the end of the story when it all comes together. All the points in the book don't tie together right away which makes it a good thriller.
If you like books that keep you on the edge of your seat, and keep you wondering though out the book this is the book for you. If you are someone who reads books and tries to figure out the ending before you get there this is definitely the book for you. This will leave you guessing the whole time. I recommend this book to anyone who just wants a good book to read. Take it from me I don't read much and I wanted to read the whole thing. That should give a hint on how good this book is.

Rating:
Summary: Soft in the middle
Review: This book started out strong, and even finished with some unexpected punch, but the vast majority of the middle of the story left me somewhat unattached to the storyline. After reading the book, I wonder why Margolin selected "The Burning Man" as the title. At first, I thought it was a symbolic reference to the main character, Peter Hale. But perhaps it is only a shallow literal reference to Mr Booth? Oh well. It is an OK legal story, but it misses something to make it special.

Rating:
Summary: Soft in the middle
Review: This book started out strong, and even finished with some unexpected punch, but the vast majority of the middle of the story left me somewhat unattached to the storyline. After reading the book, I wonder why Margolin selected "The Burning Man" as the title. At first, I thought it was a symbolic reference to the main character, Peter Hale. But perhaps it is only a shallow literal reference to Mr Booth? Oh well. It is an OK legal story, but it misses something to make it special.

Rating:
Summary: An Entertaining Legal Thriller
Review: This is not what you would call great literature but it is an entertaining read. I remember reading about a case very similar to this in the news a few years ago. I thought the characters were very well developed, especially Gary, the mentally challenged boy. Some of the attorneys in this book are cast in a very bad light, so the story might not appeal to lawyers. The romance was a little syrupy but still palatable. One of the key characters is set afire in his jail cell....thus the title, Burning Man

Rating:
Summary: Fantastic ! Great audiobook !!!!!!!!!!
Review: This is one of the best audiobooks I have ever listened to. It had characters that kept my interest. The storyline was fast paced and never boring. The reader was superb. I highly recommend. I will listen to this more than once. This book is a keeper in my book.

Rating:
Summary: Fast Paced Legal Thriller
Review: This is one of those books that makes the rest of the world disappear when you start reading. The outcome seemed fairly predictable early on but there were some surprising twists in the end. I loved this book. It's much better than anything I've read from John Grisham recently