Legally Dead (Thorndike Mystery) [Large Print] [Hardcover]

Edna Buchanan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 2008 | Series: Thorndike Mystery

Fresh from her triumphant Love Kills, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Edna Buchanan launches a new series featuring former federal agent Michael Venuri, who quits the Witness Protection Program to become a freelance identity-change expert.

Michael Venuri is a former U.S. Marshal and special operative in the Marines whose wife and unborn child die in a fluke accident on the Staten Island Ferry. After learning of two missing children in rural Vermont, the same town where he previously relocated a protected hit man with perverse tendencies and a fondness for little girls, he escapes his guilt by fleeing to Miami. When he meets a NASA employee with a reputation tainted from being blamed for the death of two fellow astronauts, Venturi helps the man fake his death in order to give him a new life with a new identity. Pleased with the idea of using his Witness Protection Program skills to help someone get a fresh start, Venturi becomes a freelance identity-change expert, helping deserving individuals fake their deaths in order to start over. Each death is faked in a different unique, ingenious, and often spectacular manner. Venturi only requires that his clients not contact anyone from their previous life, including him...but soon something evil begins to stalk his clients.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this explosive first in a new suspense series from Edgar-finalist Buchanan, Michael Venturi, a deputy U.S. marshal involved in running the Federal Witness Protection Program, realizes a mobster he's in charge of, Gino Salvi, has been sexually assaulting and killing young girls in Flemington, N.H., where Salvi is hiding out. Fired by the Feds after Salvi takes part in an armored car robbery, Venturi and an old dog he's adopted head for Florida, where he and some trusted allies set upa private agency for staging fake deaths and fashioning new identities. While some of Venturi's clients appear to need a good lawyer rather than a faked death and new identity, Buchanan constructs some ingeniously clever scenarios for rendering these people legally dead. An expert at ratcheting up suspense and creating believable, flawed characters, Buchanan (Love Kills andeight other Britt Montero novels) gets thisnew series off to a powerhouse start. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Michael Venturi is a U.S. Marshall working in the Witness Protection Program. When his superiors decide a particularly valuable mobster—who also happens to be a pedophile— should be relocated to a small midwestern town, Venturi vociferously objects. He is overruled, and when the mobster kills two young girls, Venturi becomes the fall guy. On his own, he starts a new business: helping people escape their existing lives, from a rock star sick of the spotlight to an old woman whose would-be heirs want to have her declared incompetent. As carefully as Venturi hides his clients, they start to turn up dead. Who has tapped into his secret program? The Mob? A former colleague? Buchanan, a Pulitzer winner for her work as a crime reporter and the author of the long-running Britt Montero series (Love Kills, 2007), is a bit off her game here. Although some suspension of disbelief is always required in thrillers, Buchanan asks for too much: too many coincidences, too many convenient plot twists. Still, Buchanan has a devoted following, and her fans are likely to overlook one bump in the road. --Wes Lukowsky --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 547 pages
• Publisher: Thorndike Press; Lrg edition (October 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 141041065X
• ISBN-13: 978-1410410658
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,536,320 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A big disappointment, September 28, 2008

By 

Taiyo (Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Legally Dead: A Novel (Hardcover)

I really liked this book . . . up to a point. It was well-written, the characters were likable, and the plot was different. But when it came to winding up the story line, I found the bad guy's motive simply unbelievable and his tactics far fetched at best. And -- not to give anything away -- the abrupt ending was startling, it was as though Buchanan was either tired of writing or didn't know where to take the story so she just quit writing. I hate to invest time and money into a book, only to be forced to use my imagination to give it a proper ending.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars "It takes a superhuman effort to . . . become somebody else.", October 5, 2008

By 

E. Bukowsky "booklover10" (NY United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Legally Dead: A Novel (Hardcover)

In Edna Buchanan's "Legally Dead," United States Marshall Michael Venturi has helped place a number of individuals in the Witness Protection Program. Venturi discovers that a mobster, a star witness whose testimony is considered crucial in an upcoming union corruption case, may be committing heinous acts in the New Hampshire town where he was relocated by the feds. When Michael insists that he and his colleagues have a moral obligation to keep this predator from harming innocent victims, his boss orders him to back off. Conscience-stricken, Venturi takes matters into his own hands. When Michael is fired, he is not as dispirited as someone else might be under similar circumstances. Being a U. S. Marshall had lost its allure; the job had become "disappointing, boring, and often absurd." Mike is financially well off, thanks to the huge sum of money he received in a wrongful-death settlement after a tragic accident took the life of his wife and their unborn child. He decides to relocate to Florida and, along with his old Marine buddy, Danny, starts a new project--helping people in trouble assume new identities after faking their deaths. Michael's resourceful mother-in-law, Vicki, whom he adores, assists their clients in acquiring the skills that they will need to reinvent themselves.

"Legally Dead" might have worked better had the author stuck to her central theme. She throws in unnecessary characters and extraneous subplots, such as those dealing with Vicki's wayward and self-destructive son, Sidney, and Danny's roving eye (he is the married father of three with another child on the way). The main story line is preposterous. Buchanan would have us believe that one after another, people are coming out of the woodwork who are so desperate that they are willing to throw away their old lives and start anew in a foreign country. None of Michael's clients are particularly well-drawn. The dialogue, for the most part, is cutesy and artificial. Worse yet, the author brings her book to an absurd conclusion with a series of murders that are mysteriously connected to Michael's venture. Trite writing such as "her tawny skin was luminous, her perfect teeth flashed white" do not help matters. For those readers who like plenty of action, no matter how far-fetched, this novel may provide passable entertainment. Those who prefer that even a thriller should have a semblance of realism would be better off skipping this one.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not That Good, September 5, 2008

By 

Watson McFestus "Watson McFestus" (Irving Texas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Legally Dead: A Novel (Hardcover)

The plot and the story are mildly compelling. The ex-military hero was less realistic and more self-satisfied by far than is usual in such novels. The bureaucratic underpinnings of the various law enforcement agencies involved in the story were moronically written. I'm an Edna Buchanan fan and in my opinion this is the weakest book by far that she has written, the Corpse Had a Familiar Face being the best. It's a cheap Lee Child-Jack Reacher knockoff. Avoid