When the real estate market crashes, a lawyer with one of Boston s top law firms--who moonlights as an art thief--figures some of his firm s top institutional clients won t notice if a couple of million dollars is siphoned away during the resulting chaos. But the police definitely notice when a local art museum is robbed on $100 million in art. And they certainly notice when a transvestite prostitute is found strangled in a Back Bay alley.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
David S. Brody is a Boston Globe bestselling author named Best Local Author by the Boston Phoenix newspaper. He is a Director at Large of the New England Antiquities Research Association (NEARA). A real estate attorney, he resides in Westford, Massachusetts with his wife, novelist Kimberly Scott, and their two daughters.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well-plotted thriller that I couldn't put down.,
This review is from: Unlawful Deeds (Paperback)
Intricate plotting is a lost art that relies on the introduction of characters whose parallel spheres of action seemingly will never meet and then intersect to drive the plot forward. P.G. Wodehouse, author of many light comedies involving the large-hearted and empty-headed Bertie Wooster and his manservant Jeeves, was a master of introducing dozens of characters whose predicaments began separately, inevitably intertwined, and ended in a satisfying denouement that left the reader stunned by the clever way all the loose ends tied together. While Unlawful Deeds, by David S. Brody, is a mystery/legal thriller written in a far different genre than Wodehouse's complicated comedy of manners and takes as its spiritual predecessor John Grisham, Brody's ability to create a universe in which all of his characters' lives begin separately and eventually intersect in a deliciously evil story of greed, murder, deception, and justice is reminiscent of Wodehouse's plot-juggling abilities, a great compliment indeed for a young writer. Bruce Arrujo is a new young lawyer and an old criminal, whose former modus operandi was stealing art, but who now aspires to real estate fraud when he lands a job with a prestigious Boston law firm's real estate department. The story begins with Bruce's fencing of a Manet painting and includes references to the theft of paintings from the Gardner Museum by Bruce's partner in crime. Unfortunately, this is one plot line that the author does not further pursue and its presence in the story does not add much to an otherwise superlative and complicated plot. Bruce picks his dupe early in the story, a young real estate broker named Pierre Prefontaine, a more or less moral "vulture" whose nose for a bargain foreclosure auction gains him a reputation and publicity, and Bruce becomes his attorney. Pierre acquires a condominium complex in which dwells Charese, a transvestite who is suing her former lover, Roberge Krygier, for support and who occupies their former condo under the protection of court order. Charese's refusal to vacate and her involvement in litigation makes it impossible for Pierre to evict her so that he can sell the building quickly and make the profit he needs to support his wife and baby. Later, Pierre acquires a huge condominium complex being auctioned off by a government that promises huge profits for Pierre and his partner, Howie Plansky. They turn to Bruce to help them consummate the deal, and Bruce's deviltry becomes poetry in motion as he maneuvers a guileless and ignorant Pierre into structuring the deal in an illegal way. After Charese is found murdered, Bruce tries to frame Pierre not only as Charese's killer but calls to the police's attention the real estate fraud that Bruce has arranged for the unwitting Pierre to commit. The question is, was Bruce willing to commit murder in order to swindle Pierre out of his property deal? Or did Pierre actually commit the murder to force a quicker sale of Charese's condo building in order to prevent financial ruin, and was Bruce, knowing that much of the evidence pointed to Pierre, merely being an opportunistic vulture attempting to gain Pierre's property interests? There are other suspects, including Reese Jeffries, an unscrupulous public interest attorney who represented Charese in a lawsuit against her former lover, Roberge, the son of a powerful real estate developer whom Jeffries, a rent control advocate, hates and would like to embarrass into bankruptcy. Roberge and/or his father, Wesley, might have killed Charese to avoid further public disclosure of the details of Roberge's homosexual affair with a transvestite and the video tape that Charese possessed showing Roberge having sex with young boys. Or is there another suspect out there, a nameless, faceless adversary who foils Bruce's real estate swindles? Unlawful Deeds is set in the period of the late eighties and early nineties, a time of plunging real estate values and threatening overall economic recession. Brody does a thorough job of recreating the uncertain and gloomy mood of the moment, and includes a great deal of detail about the nuts and bolts of real estate transactions (although some of the detail was a bit technical, sometimes unnecessary and eventually excessive), knowledge which the reader can trust because Brody is himself a real estate attorney. Praiseworthy as well is Brody's use of his knowledge of Boston to give the reader a genuine feeling of being on the spot, particularly if one is familiar with the streets of Boston. Although the solution to the mystery was a little predictable, it was nevertheless an enormously fun read, and was exceedingly hard to put down.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I Couldn't Put it Down!,
By A Customer
This review is from: Unlawful Deeds (Paperback)
This book attracted me because the story takes place in Boston. It is an engaging insigt into Boston's real estate bust in the late 80's/early 90's. The characters are fresh, interesting and some seem strangely familiar. Suspense, deception, romance, murder, success, failure...this intelligent page turner has it all.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Grisham for thinkers,
By A Customer
This review is from: Unlawful Deeds (Paperback)
From the first chapter to the very end, I couldn't put this book down. The characters were well-established, multi-dimensional, and truly believeable, and the plot, with all of its twists and turns, was nevertheless easy to follow. As a lawyer, I've always suspected (feared?) that people as calculating as Bruce exist. May they stay in Boston. In all, a great read.
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