Customer Reviews

Perfect Alibi (Mike Daley Mystery #7)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

...and Mike and Rosie have a really bad one on their hands. I have to be careful not to give away the plot, but suffice to say that 16-going-on-30 year old Grace has gotten herself into a rough place. Take a boyfriend who SHOULD have been relatively problem free, add a rich-but-dysfunctional family with a murder victim who wasn't all the world thought him to be, mix in a good dose of bad luck and teenage hormones, and look out!!

Once again Sheldon delivers a fantastic novel with a cast of characters that are old friends by now. Pete and Sylvia are, each in their own way, as tough as ever, Roosevelt is showing his age but remains a good cop, Nicole is a gorgeous opportunist, Kaela Joy is as hot as always, and Judge McDaniel is still a model for all judges. If some of our favorites, like Nick and Mort, are missing, we will just look forward to seeing them in some future book.

Of course San Francisco is truly a place like no other on earth and Sheldon always manages to make us feel at home. The high-priced shops of Union Square, neat places like Books Inc. and Amoeba Records, the various eateries, Chinatown, the Golden Gate, the cable cars, on and on and on...marvelous!!!

Sheldon Siegel is simply the very best of the "lawyer" authors and "Perfect Alibi" is fully up to the standard we expect. You may be uncomfortable with the problems parents have with kids (especially if you've "been there"), but you'll admire the way Mike and Rosie deal with them. If I go on much longer I shall ruin it for you, so I'll just say go buy it and get ready to enjoy.

This wasn't the best Sheldon Siegel novel to me. It's hard feeling sympathy for the victim as well as his son accused of murder both were pathological liars. Grace was overly sarcastic teenager instead of helping she did everything to complicate the case as well making it hard on her parents who were only trying to defend her. Rosie and Mike was dynamic as usually. but it wasn't enough to help the novel. I will wait for the eighth novel.

The publisher's back-cover blurb sets the scene:

"For Mike Daley and Rosie Fernandez - former spouses and current
law partners - the stakes have never been higher. . . . Their
sixteen-year-old daughter's boyfriend has been arrested on
suspicion of murdering his father, a Superior Court judge.
Bobby Fairchild, however, claims to have found his father's body
upon returning home from a date with Grace . . . . his only alibi."


Siegel's trade-mark humor adds so much to the story.

For example: (1)a judge named Putty Chandler is "well into the
back nine of a thoroughly undistinguished judicial career."

(2)Gary Winer is a "cloying, owl-eyed man with large horn-rimmed
glasses, a horrific comb-over and a grating nasal voice. He's
spent the past thirty years trying to make the world safer for
insurance companies."

(3)Mike and Rosie's four-year-old son, Tommy is a: "happy kid,
but he's also a worrier. 'no worries,' he asks. I'm not sure
if he picked up the line from me or Barney the Dinosaur."

(4)Assistant DA, Bill McNulty, is labeled "McNasty" by Mike
and considered a "terminal curmudgeon" and a "competent
lifer."

Siegel, a practicing SF attorney for more than
twenty-five years, knows the legal ins and outs and
shares them expertly and easily with his readers. We
learn, for example, about the CSI Effect.

You learn more about the City Siegel loves. In
every book. this time we are treated to the history of
Tank Hill, the Bohemian Club, and the Tenderloin area, to
name a few.

Above all, however, in Sheldon Siegel's books you
learn to love his characters because you know he loves
them, as he talks of them with compassion and insight.
Not all of the regulars have returned. I miss Nick the
Dick, for example. However, Rosie Johnson is present and
accounted for in the following sketch:

"The dean of San francisco homicide inspectors has handled
every high-profile murder investigation in the City for forty years.
A half-century ago, he and my father formed the SFPD's first inte-
grated team. The good news is he'll proceed with competence and
professionalism. the bad news is he doesn't arrest anybody unless
he has the goods. . . . Inspector Roosevelt Johnson eyes me through
wire-rimmed, aviator-style bifocals. The former college tight end
has dropped some weight since he underwent radiation treatments
for throat cancer last year. Nevertheless, the seventy-five-year
old legend still carries over two hundred pounds on his imposing six-foot-four-inch frame. The war-horse has fought the cancer to a
standstill, but his lyrical baritone has developed a gravelly edge."

When I compose my list of favorite authors for friends,
Sheldon Siegel is always at the very top. He will be at the top
of your list as well. Start with: SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES.

Note: Unfortunately, Amazon did not offer this title soon
enough for me. I'm happy to see it is available now.

Yes! Just got my first Rosie and mike Daley fix in some years. This is his best book to date. These characters are so real even after all this time. I read a lot, and some of my favorite suspense authors have gotten very formulaic lately. He manages to keep his contributions fresh and current. I feel like I have grown old with these two and their children's ages parallel mine. So enjoyed this on my Kindle. It wasn't available in hardcover addition. Thanks again.

As with all of Sheldon Siegel's work, I found Perfect Alibi suspenseful and enjoyable. The added tension between Mike and Rosie and their teenaged daughter added to the adrenaline rush. The book was full of interesting and sinister characters who were well-developed. I couldn't decide who I really wanted to take the fall for Judge Fairchild's murder, and the author kept me guessing until the very end.
I highly recommend Sheldon's work to anyone who likes a fast-paced read and who appreciates solid characters.

Having found this author quite by accident (I meant to read the reviews of one of his books and I wasn't paying attention and I purchased it instead), I was quite pleased with this series and have since read all of them. The book moves quickly, doesn't have ridiculous twists that are so contrived you wonder why you wasted your time, and the characters are human and well written. Pulitzer Prize winning? No, but definitely worth the cost of admission and your time.

Perfect Alibi, like its predecessors in this series, is wonderful. I really enjoyed it! Will read it again when I have time.

Sorry, but I've read all the Mike Daley mysteries and this is the weakest by far. Those kids are ridiculous!!! They are smart enough to be at the top of their class headed to college and children of lawyers and judges but act as though they don't have a clue as to how the legal system works. They are accused of killing a judge and facing capital murder charges but they are more concerned with if they they are going to get yelled at or how long their punishment will be??? The boy has attempted suicide while getting beat-up in jail with no bail and on his way to being raped or killed because of his youth and good looks but his attorneys, his girl friend's parents, are more concerned with if he had sex with their teenage daughter??? So distraught, they threaten to quit representing the boy and additionally charge him with statutory rape (he's a recently turned 18 year old high school senior and she's a sophomore) although that will expose their own daughter to perjury and accessory to murder charges. They even stoop so low as to tell the boy that his mother is having an affair then later laments that the boy's mother never thanked them for their services. WTF!!! Attorneys Mike and Rosie are too moralistic and judgmental (people are scum who have affairs or have sex with prostitutes). Mike capitulates to whatever Rosie wants because she knows best, has the best instincts he has ever known, is the better parent, the better attorney and his mother-in-law is just great with the kids. He needs to grow a pair! One redeeming part of the book that increased it to two stars is that we learn the daughter has indeed been having sex all along with multiple partners. At least a bit of realism.

Seigel shows his lawyer-parent duo struggling with the ultimate conflict of interest -- a parent's love of a child and a lawyers duty to a client. No question which way they will go unless presented with a "perfect alibi" that clears both. Well done.

John M. Poswall
Author of "The Altar Boys."