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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
unprincipaled,
By
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This review is from: The Night Lawyer: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)
Michelle Spring, in her manifestation as author of the Laura Principal series, is one of my favorite mystery writers. I buy her books in hardback, which is how I ended up with The Night Lawyer on my hands. Alas! I spent weeks and weeks looking forward to this book's publication and saved it for my first reading after posting fall semester grades. And I couldn't believe the evidence of my eyes.
Oh, she did not write a chick lit book. Yes, she did. The mere absence of Laura Principal from Spring's pages is a reason for sadness, but that could have been a loss from which it would be possible to recover. After all, Ellie Porter might have been as interesting as the protagonists of Laurie R King's stand-alone novels. Spring, however, has changed not just characters, but genres. This is a romance. I kept waiting, waiting, waiting for it to turn into a mystery, but it stayed relentlessly in the pink genre, for all its hot orange dust-jacket. Our heroine (definitely not a hero) Ellie Porter is tiny and feminine and hopelessly in love with a married man and recovering from a nervous breakdown (after married man dumped her) and victimized by a wicked mother and bossy friends and targeted by a stalker and asked out by every guy she meets and forced to cope with mean girls in the office place. And she cuts herself. Please. This is a Lifetime movie. Ellie has a pet, a hamster named Odysseus, cute and little. Even as I read about this adorable rodent, I know it is doomed to some generically gruesome end. Sadly, the hamster is appropriate in a pathetic way. Ellie is just not up to keeping a real pet -- too self-absorbed. The breath-stopping suspense of the Laura Principal books is here morphed into low dread besieging poor little Ellie, she who is "tiny, but perfectly made," she of the cloud of hair and dusting of teeny freckles. Yes, she knows karate, but she doesn't like all that aggressive sparring they have to do, and -- although she's just so darned cute in her white pajamas -- neither she nor we feel her expertise could save her from all the mean men whose interest threatens her. (OK, she does have sex with a karate guy, but if you blink, you'll miss it.) Any elements of independence or self-confidence in Ellie seem to be there by mistake, leaching through from Spring's real hero, Laura. Even the archetypal transformation of the last 10 pages fails to rehabilitate Ellie's poor petite persona. And hearing her chant "all grown up now" at age 30 is deeply annoying. For reasons passing my understanding, Spring chooses to narrate this in the present tense. Ellie comes and goes (fully half the novel is filled with her trips back and forth across the Isle of Dogs) and works and works out and sighs and cries all in the present tense. Is this a convention of the romance novel? It makes for very awkward reading: that which has happened, that which will happen, and that which is happening all inhabit the same temporal plain. If this device is intended to show us that Ellie is trapped in her own past, it's unnecessary. The endless iterations of her childhood fears more than accomplish that. And then the syntax there is. "A chilly December day his birthday was, with a low gray ceiling of cloud, and Carl was in the back garden setting up a laundry line." What's up with that? No, it's not limited to narration about that one character, but pops up here and there and here, seemingly to no purpose. I keep expecting a red wheelbarrow and white chickens. If you're looking for a murder mystery, keep looking. Try Laurie King or Deborah Crombie or the early Tanenbaum novels ghosted by Michael Gruber. Try Spring's Laura Principal books. Try for real women, not a cute and quivering victim.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A CHILLING RICH EVOCATION OF LONDON,
This review is from: The Night Lawyer: A Novel of Suspense (Hardcover)
Michelle Spring deserves her reputation as a topnotch writer of psychological suspense (In the Midnight Hour, Nights in White Satin.) She goes full throttle again to deliver chills and nail biting tension with The Night Lawyer. Ellie Porter is a young woman struggling to put her life back in order following a nervous breakdown. Abandonment by her married lover was the major cause of her illness, although she is also haunted by the murder of her father some twenty years ago. Slightly built she is blessed with long, curly reddish gold hair, and an eye catching figure. ""Though Ellie's scarcely aware of it, heads turn and grown men weaken when she shrugs off a shawl to reveal a well-cut black dress and a decolletage to die for." She's pays scant attention to her assets as she concentrates on regaining mental health. Her mother, Anabel, is of little help, rather the opposite constantly harping on Ellie's weight gain, nagging that she'll never attract another man. That's the last thing Ellie wants. She turns to karate to boost her self-confidence, and in order to practice during the day she takes a night job. This is not just any job, she's a night lawyer with London's Chronicle newspaper. She's the one responsible for catching anything that might be cause for legal action against the paper. Ellie's the Chronicle's only night lawyer, and she works alone. She seems well on the road to recovery when her tranquility at home is interrupted by sounds coming through the wall from next door. It is Jessica, a young neighbor with a bent for self-mutilation, and Jessica's boyfriend, Tull, who has an aversion to honest labor. Almost against her will we see soft-hearted Ellie becoming involved in the young woman's troubled life. That is but one drama that intrudes upon her world - Ellie believes she is being watched, stalked, and she is. Someone follows her in the dark of night when she leaves work. Who and why? British author Spring richly evokes London, the Isle of Dogs, the Docklands. Her setting is described not only with telling detail but with affection. For this reader Ellie's character was not presented as clearly, yet suspense is well crafted as it moves, albeit slowly, to a startling finish. - Gail Cooke
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Night Lawyer: A Novel of Suspense (Kindle Edition)
This book had be hooked within the 1st couple of chapters. I lost much sleep trying to finish this book as I couldn't wait to find out what would happen next. The main character was well rounded and easy to imagine. This book was a wonderful read.
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