Customer Reviews

Natural Suspect

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

NATURAL SUSPECT is a roller coaster ride on the noir side which alternately keeps you glued to your chair while its amazingly cohesive plot unreels and hanging on for dear life to keep from rolling on the floor with laughter. Mavened by master of suspense William Bernhardt, this delightful whodunnit-and-why? thriller combines his own talents with those of eleven other top writers in the genre round-robin fashion...each in turn adding hir own unique touch to whatever has gone before...and moves hilariously from twist to turn as we follow the trail of a cunning killer down one blind alley after another to the novel's absolutely logical denouement. There's simply no way to capsulize the plotline since what Bernhardt begins as a dysfunctional family saga...mega-millionaire Daddy Hightower, after threatening to disinherit his entire wacky family, has been found dead in the deep freeze...speedily develops a life of its own as a hoot-and-a-half pastiche where all the gimmicks and stock characters appropriate to the genre (from the hard-boiled gumshoe to amateur-detective-wins-out with overtones of international espionage plus Hitchcock's classic McGuffin in the form of a rabbit) are brilliantly satirized, limited only by the imaginations of the individual writers and the reader's willingness to accept their premises. What fun! its authors must have had playing Can-You-Top-This? and their pleasure is thoroughly contagious. As a reader, I found myself mentally rubbing my hands in glee to see what would/could happen next under the now-given circumstances. What is perhaps most unusual of all about this surprisingly compelling exercise in suspense is just how well the whole story hangs together without ever violating our willingness to suspend disbelief. These folks really know their business, and I'd call NATURAL SUSPECT a "natural" wonder and a definite must-read for fans of the genre.

See storyline above.

William Bernhardt leads of this novel with the first chapter, in a collaborative work of fiction sure to entertain. The uniqueness lies in the fact that each of the authors didnt know the storyline until it was his/her turn to write a chapter. When the author is finished with his/her chapter, he sends it on to the next.
The end result is a fun and entertaining mystery written by some very talented writers (see above). The novel was written more for fun and should be read with this in mind. If you want a quick and entertaining read that has a lot of humor and surprises, this is it.

Recommended for all mystery lovers with a flair for fun.

After all the rave reviews, I couldn't wait to start this book. What a disappointment it was. I found the characters shallow and totally unlikeable, the plot impossible to follow, and in general....just a boring book. I read to the end but now I don't know why I bothered.

The Hightowers of Hightower oil may be very rich, but they are not happy. The mother Julia is a drunk; the son is a dilettante with a wife who has a single digit IQ; and the daughter believes play is weed. The patriarch, Arthur, never encouraged them to work, preferring they remain under his control until he was ready to divorce his wife and disinherit his children.

Before that could happen, Arthur is found murdered, frozen solid in the family's locked freezer. The wife is arrested because the victim's blood was on her blouse and her pearls were found in his hands. She is a heavy drunk who suffers blackouts and had no alibi. Julia hires a no name lawyer who realizes that there is a lot more to this case than meets the eye.

NATURAL SUSPECT is one story line divided by chapters with each chapter written by some very famous writers in the mystery field including Leslie Glass, Michael Palmer and John Lescroart. The chapters are numbered but no credit is given to the author (except for chapter one written by William Bernhardt) so readers will have a mystery trying to figure out which writer wrote what chapter. The chapters smoothly flow into another, but with different styles making for an interesting puzzle inside a who-done-it that turns NATURAL SUSPECT into a fine read.

Harriet Klausner

I must say I was almost put off the multiple author pass on for continuation story by another book called Watchlist: A Serial Thriller where none of the contributors got into the spirit of the project and most just wrote completely standalone short stories with weak links such as one character is related to a previous author's character and so on. So I was ecstatically surprised upon turning each subsequent chapter to discover that all eleven authors in this one got right into the project, weren't just going through the motions and seemed to enjoy picking right up where the previous author had left off, adding their own twists to the plots and in many cases making a nice cliff hanger chapter ending for the next author to deal with.

If you've never picked up this style of novel before, think back to your school days when you probably participated in an exercise like this with everyone in the class writing a paragraph then passing the paper to the person sitting next to them who wrote the next paragraph, passed it to the next person and so on until everyone in the class had contributed to each of the 30 or so stories. You no doubt had a lot of fun with it trying to twist different classmates work so far into your own ideas, such as introducing elements to characters to change the previous image of them, killing some off and putting something weird in their for the conservative kid next to you to deal with. It's evident these real world successful authors had a lot of fun participating in this and the afterword tells us that they all didn't want the plot skeleton outlined beforehand but wanted to pick up and challenge each other, by reading the novel so far up to the point it was complete then adding their own twists and turns.

The team of authors that contributed to this are William Bernhardt, Leslie Glass, Gini hartzmark, John Katzenbach, John Lescroat, Bonnie MacDougal, Philip Margolin, Brad Meltzer, Michael Palmer, Lisa Scottoline and Laurence Shames.

The plot starts off by Bernhardt, with Arthur Hightower, a rich self made tycoon disappointed in the growing slackness of his family and increasingly alcoholic wife, as well as their clear lack of understanding of the value of money. He tells them before storming out on a business trip that he is rewriting his will to exclude them all and they are all going to have to get jobs when he returns. He is later found in a massive freezer in his mansion's basement holding his wife's pearls, which she had refused to give back to him the night of his departure when he demanded them. This is a great mystery who done it, helped massively by the fact that only the authors who wrote the end chapters had any idea who murdered Arthur Hightower simply because it was up to them to decide.

The only bad thing about this novel is you don't find out which author wrote which chapter if you were so impressed that you want to read their own books. For the example whoever turned the book in chapter three from a legal to an on the edge of your seat thriller, with the introduction of a captive (who was a character from the previous chapter) suddenly tied to a chair being tormented by a clown not only clearly ensured the spirit of the book but wrote a really great chapter. When the book was published there was a website you could go to and enter a competition to guess which author was which but that link just redirects you to an online bookshop now.

If anyone did ever find out which author wrote which chapter feel free to comment on this review.

William Bernhardt's Natural Suspect is a legal thriller with a twist: Bernhardt starts the event with a chapter setting the plot; then writers from Phillip Margolin and Brad Meltzer to Leslie Glass and Lisa Scottoline add their own twists to the tale. The result: a remarkably smooth yet unpredictable story which fans of crime and suspense will appreciate.

Superstar author William Bernhardt here assembles a cast of fellow mystery stars to provide an entertaining legal tale that shows the positives and negatives of collaborative novels.

First, the positives--Collaborative novels are hot! Few things are as intriguing as multiple popular authors under one cover. The reader is able to sample the works of authors s/he may not have read before along with old favorites.

All of the authors included in this book are top-flight stars. Bernhardt starts this novel with a bang, laying out the murder mystery and primary characters in light fashion. Each subsequent author then adds to the plot and adds a new twist of his/her own. In the final chapter, Bernhardt then wraps up all the loose ends of this convulted tale, solves the whodunit, and ensures a happy ending. The plot moves along well and the book can be easily read in a day or two.

The negatives?--Many of the same things that will make some people love this book. Because each author has unique style and views of where the plot should go, the tale can flow very unevenly. Characters likable in previous chapters become villainous in later chapters. Details presented in earlier chapters become inconsequential later in the story. This will disappoint readers more accustomed to a favorite author. Perhaps a previously agreed-upon plot outline may have minimized some of this confusion.

Overall, however, collaborative novels are written as novelty -- fundraising for the Nature Conservancy in this case. While this novel isn't superior in its quality, it is a whole lot of fun and it has definitely introduced me to some mystery writers that I may not have sought out otherwise. This book is well worth the time.

I originally picked up the book because I recently read a book by Katzenbach and absolutely loved it! I would rate it (A Madman's Tale)as one of my all time favorites, so it is obvious to see why I would pick another that he had taken part in. But if not for the proceeds going to the Nature Conservancy I would find it not just a waste of time but also money. And unfortunately it has me not very interested in searching out any of the other authors books. Great concept - dreadful outcome.

While ostensibly a "legal thriller" about the death of a tycoon, in reality this book reads more like a zany combo of chase movie/murder mystery, with a lethal cross-dressing assassin targeting one character after another. The authors then throw in adulterous rich people, a secret organization avenging corporate misdeeds, a giant pet rabbit with a hi-tech secret, and a defense-attorney heroine with a secret benefactor. A group of famous mystery writers each wrote a chapter of this book, whose profits benefit the Nature Conservancy (hence the title), with each chapter throwing in a new plot twist and ending in a cliff-hanger, until the hilarious end. Might make a lively TV movie, and definitely makes for a fast, fun read.