Customer Reviews

Render Up the Body

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I got this book for my birthday from my husband after I asked for a legal mystery that takes place somewhere other than New York or in the South. I was thrilled to read about a wonderful and unique setting. The information about the inner workings of the legal system were wonderful and all the sub-plots fit in nicely. After reading the beginning I thought how could an attorney defend this scum but wanted desperately for him to win his habeus corpus after getting to know him. I cried uncontrolably at the outcome.

Ms. Wesson, in her depiction of DA Groesbeck, adroitly captured what many of us believe Boulder's real life DA to be...and that's not complimentary (read the book about JonBenet Ramsey, and you'll get the idea). The story carried me along, and the ending was unexpected yet believable. I enjoyed the foray into criminal law, learned a lot, and hope we haven't seen the last of Cinda Hayes. A terrific first novel.

Render Up the Body revels in its simplicity.
Lucinda Hayes is a former prosecutor, who forsakes her job as the director of a rape crisis center to represent a death row inmate, Jason Smiley, in his appeal.
Marianne Wesson's legal experience serves as an anchor for the book, but her crisp writing is a delight. Cinda Hayes comes across as a lady with issues; Jason Smiley as a murderer who'll grasp at any straw to escape execution. The plot is simple, which means it accomodates complex legal ideas easily, and the end carries the stinger.
Lovers of legal thrillers and good writing should have one command: Render up this novel.

I found this book on a friend's bookshelf and hijacked it while looking for something new to read. I was THRILLED from the moment I began reading and kept right on going to the end. In fact, I was SO impressed that I e-mailed the author to congratulate her on a job well done - I've never done that before.

Cinda Hayes becomes a new character full of personality and connected to friends covering all spectrums of life. Ms. Wesson's ability to bring these people to life during the course of the book astounded me. When I closed this one, I began searching for her next novel which I read just as quickly.

Her third in the series is due out in February, 2002 and I will be sitting on GO when the bookstore opens. This author is someone who will be around for a long, long time.

i LOVED this book!!!! the characters are real, fully fleshed out....story is terrific...quite different than the run of the mill plot...but the ending...i sure didn't see that one coming and i consider myself quite the sophisticate in reading...!!! all the minutiae about climbing and boulder and the court system was completely fascinating to me....i hope that marianne (mimi?) will definitely quit her day job and write faster so we can see more of her work....!!! i just cannot believe that this was a first novel....why isn't it on top of the charts???? why isn't it getting any press????? she certainly weaves a far better tale than cornwell any day.... i reallllly hope that cinda, tory, linda, sam and lincoln will be back in future books...they're great!!! if i had any complaint about this book at all it would be that i wish the chapters were a bit shorter....you know, when you're sitting up in bed reading and you say to yourself.....'just one more chapter'? well, these chapters were way too long to say that but that's only a quirk of mine....another big quirk of mine is the fact that a lot of the big time authors now start numbering their pages with the title page rather than page 1 where chapter 1 begins as marianne does properly....she gives you your money's worth and more....excellent first book and i look forward to many years of reading more and more of her books....just don't let us wait too long for the next one....please?????

Well written legal mystery with excellent charactors. Not really a mystery or thriller yet it was the kind of book that was interesting in the way of how the legal system works in terms of trying to get a conviction overturned when the person has already been sentenced to die by lethal injection. Very suprising ending. Easy to follow, interesting to read.

I must admit, Cinda did not grab me at the beginning. But around page 40 or so, I reached the point where I simply could not put the book down. And when I had to, I couldn't stop thinking about it, wondering what the real story was, what would happen next. I highly recommend this book to all fans of a great thriller or mystery. I am looking forward to the next book in the series!

Render Up the Body is one of the best books I have read in a while. In fact, I can honestly say I read it in one day. Until the end, I had no idea of the guilt or innocence of Jason. In addition, the twist at the end was totally unexpected. I am definitely looking forward to Ms. Wesson's next novel to find out what she is planning to do for an encore.

I predict this amazing first novel will be a best seller. It engaged me so that I stayed up half the night to keep reading. Wonderful characterizations, involved and engaging plot with surprise ending. A real treat!

A bookclub I belong to recently invited Mimi Wesson to talk to our group about this book which we had all read. We discussed whether or not we found the book to be a liberal tract as one of the reviews had suggested. Of course, we are Boulderites, but we felt that the book showed an unusual degree of ambiguity for its type. Ms. Wesson said that she tried to create a main character who was in no way perfect or sure of her every move that is typical of feminist heroines. Cinda is plagued by doubts and pulled in opposite directions. She ends up defending a rapist--who is portrayed rather sympathetically-- in spite of the objections of her feminist friends. She also said that she didn't decide the ending of the book until she had written about two-thirds of it. Other than a few lapses--couldn't the dead body have been identified by fingerprints or dental records? don't the characters talk in a jokey, adolescent fashion?--the book is very intelligent and leaves the reader feeling outraged that habeus corpus doesn't allow for the argument of innocence. Wesson said that she regrets the law's emphasis on procedure at the expense of truth and justice. But this novel is not a polemic but an entertaining legal thriller with the flavor of Boulder to add some spice.