Shoot
the Lawyer Twice
A
Rep and Melissa Pennyworth Mystery
Michael
Bowen
Poisoned
Pen Press (Hardcover)
ISBN-10: 1-59058-529-1 (1590585291)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-529-0 (9781590585290)
Publication Date: October 2008
List Price: $24.95
Synopsis (from
the publisher): When a frat boy finds himself on trial in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, for piracy on the high seas, lawyer Rep Pennyworth suspects
he’s being used as an unwitting accomplice in a cheap
publicity stunt. Meanwhile his wife Melissa, the professor-half of the
couple, gets caught in the middle of a verbal firefight between two
colleagues at a literary conference that soon escalates into burglary,
theft, jury-tampering, forgery of an explosive papal document from
World War II -- and murder.
Melissa wants to protect a naive undergraduate who might be implicated.
But when one of the other suspects makes Melissa a cast-iron alibi, she
finds that her search for the truth leads through a maze of gray lies
-- including her own.
Caught between an investigative reporter who's still having flashbacks
to 1968, a fellow professor whose acute political correctness masks
ruthless academic ambition, an engineer whose father's heart attack may
have been either suicide or murder, and a brace of cunning lawyers out
for blood, Rep and Melissa have to combine their talents to stay off
the casualty list while they figure out what's really going on.
Review:
Reppert "Rep" and Melissa Pennyworth find themselves trapped in a maze
of conflicting agendas involving lawyers (of which Rep is one),
academics (of which Melissa is one), and business executives and more
in Shoot
the Lawyer Twice, the fourth
mystery in this series by Michael Bowen.
The plot of Shoot the Lawyer Twice
has so many facets, so many angles, that it's hard to pick just one to
be considered the primary one. Using the opening chapter as a guide for
selection, Jimmy Clevenger is on trial for piracy on the high seas for
uttering the line "sex or swim" to the female owner of a yacht anchored
in Lake Michigan a half-mile off the coast of Milwaukee. The woman,
Carolyn Hoeckstra, jumped overboard and swam to shore. The legal basis
for Jimmy's indictment seems to rest on nuances of the law, something a
battery of attorneys seem perfectly willing to debate at length, all
the while racking up billable hours. This being a murder mystery, a
dead body must make an appearance at some point, but the victim is not
directly related, but not unrelated either, to the legal case. Harald
Angstrom, a colleague of Melissa's and a client of Rep's, is killed by
ingesting a lethal dose of curare. While Rep follows the case of Jimmy
Clevenger, Melissa looks into why Harald Angstom may have been a threat
to someone, enough that they killed him.
The word "erudite" leaps to mind while reading Shoot the Lawyer Twice.
Rep and Melissa relate to each other and their colleagues in a learned,
scholarly manner, not quite annoyingly highbrow but close. The
narrative is sharply written and the dialog frequently witty, all in
all generally a pleasure to read. The trick comes in following the plot
which is so twisted that the book should have come with handy notecards
to assist readers in matching who is involved with what. It's also a
bit frustrating when something potentially interesting is introduced
(and it's important to pay attention because the reader is never quite
sure if it's significant or even relevant to the plot) then never
mentioned again.
All the effort expended into reading and trying to understand Shoot the Lawyer Twice
would have been worthwhile had the resolution not been so ...
pedestrian. It's really rather disappointing. A plot as complicated and
convoluted as this, and really in many ways cleverly devised, deserved
a more demanding and satisfying conclusion.
Special thanks to Poisoned Pen Press for providing an ARC of Shoot the Lawyer Twice for this review.
Review Copyright © 2008 — Hidden Staircase Mystery Books — All Rights Reserved
Have you read Shoot the Lawyer Twice? How would you rate it?
Mysteries in this series ...
Screenscam
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), October 2001
ISBN-10: 1-890208-91-4 (1890208914)
ISBN-13: 978-1-890208-91-2 (9781890208912)
Unforced
Error
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), April 2004
ISBN-10: 1-59058-109-1 (1590581091)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-109-4 (9781590581094)
Putting
Lipstick on a Pig
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), July 2006
ISBN-10: 1-59058-287-X (159058287X)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-287-9 (9781590582879)
Shoot the Lawyer Twice
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), October 2008
ISBN-10: 1-59058-529-1 (1590585291)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-529-0 (9781590585290)
Service Dress Blues
Poisoned Pen Press (Hardcover), September 2009
ISBN-10: 1-59058-667-0 (1590586670)
ISBN-13: 978-1-59058-667-9 (9781590586679)
Omnimystery
keywords for Shoot the Lawyer Twice
...
Location(s) referenced: Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
