The Attorney (original 2000; edition 2000)

Attorney Paul Madriani moves to San Diego to be closer to child advocate Susan McKay. He's barely in town, when a man comes to him with a case; find his missing granddaughter. Paul will be dragged into a case that will shake his very foundations. I enjoyed the story, however it did drag in places I thought. I give the book a B+! ( )

Lawyer Paul has plans - a new practice in San Diego, and if things work out, a future with Susan. But when Paul meets an old client, whose granddaughter has been abducted, he is drawn into a case which destroys everything he believes in. ( )

Boring squabbling over trivia in the courtroom. Lot's of "gottcha's" that don't mean a thing. Skip to the last couple of chapters where the entire drama is finally played out in fast-motion. ( )

This is another Paul Madriani story. It flows fast, I read it in one day. The story starts out with him taking on a Lottery winnig client who is trying to regained his kidnapped grandchild. The clint ends up needing his help to fight off a murder charge that seems to be connected to the kidnapping. The story is fun but has a couple of holes, still fun. You are given a couple of clues, but I do not think you will figure out the end of the book until you read it.... ( )

#70, 2004

An enjoyable read - it kept me turning pages past my bedtime. A courtroom drama about a woman who kidnaps her daughter from the grandparents who have custody . . . the grandfather comes to attorney Paul Madriani for help in retrieving his granddaughter. I don't imagine it's much of a spoiler to say that someone involved with the kidnapping turns up dead (most courtroom dramas do center around a murder trial, after all ::grin::), and Madriani has to solve the case and save his client from a guilty verdict. There were some interesting twists and turns, and the author laid his clues pretty well - I'd suspected the real killer early on, but then started to second-guess myself as the book went on. There were times, though, when I found the writing style distracting; it was written in the first person, but occassionally seemed to shift to someone else's PoV for short periods. Or maybe that was my imagination. I found the ending a bit anti-climactic. And, at the end when the killer was revealed (this probably is a bit of a SPOILER) I found myself annoyed that I had seen it early on, but mostly dismissed this character as a possiblitiy because none of the characters in the book seemed to consider (or even *notice*) that this person had oodles of motive and opportunity. So, this person was never even mentioned as a possible suspect, which I found more than a bit unbelieveable. Still, it was worth reading. ( )