Veteran criminal attorney Hyde's debut legal thriller features a veteran criminal attorney whose latest case, defending a homeless man against a homicide charge, keeps getting more and more complicated. Eventually, if somewhat predictably (this happens a lot in the legal-thriller genre), Stuart Clay, who might make an interesting series lead, has to risk his own career to save his client's life. The plot is functional, though hardly remarkable, but the main attraction here is the author's familiarity with his Washington, D.C., setting. Much like George Pelecanos, Hyde knows all the nooks and crannies, all the dusty alleyways and grotty street corners, that hover behind the capital city's shiny facade. With a little narrative polish, this might have been a truly remarkable first novel. As is, it heralds a fresh new voice and another crime author who recognizes that a carefully evoked setting can steal the show. David Pitt
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Product Description
Murder is like real estate, and when Benny Batiste's head winds up on a Georgetown parking meter, defense attorney Stuart Clay finds that the location-location-location puts the District of Columbia in an uproar. Police detain Cleveland Barnes wearing a green army raincoat, a battered top hat, and bloodied Bally loafers. As Benny had been discovered both headless and shoeless, Cleveland is charged with murder and Stuart is appointed to represent him. Stuart thinks Cleveland is a hapless street person who filched some shoes, but nothing more. Homicide Detective Rhondo Touhey insists that Stuart is dead wrong and warns him that "some mocking birds are guilty as sin and deserve what they get." Stuart's pursuit of witnesses and clues takes the reader on a tour de force of the D.C. criminal justice system and connects a band of homeless living under Georgetown's Key Bridge, the Bronx mob, the urban renaissance of Washington, D.C., and a malignant evil that fingers Stuart to be its next prey.
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