A review by canada_matt
Moment of Truth by Lisa Scottoline

adventurous challenging informative mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

As the Lisa Scottoline binge continues, the stories remain of high quality. Scottoline develops her protagonists well and adds great adversity to keep them sharp and learning with the turn of each page. In this piece, Mary DiNunzio steps up to fill the shoes left by her vacationing boss, taking a murder case that could have many implications. While a fellow attorney confesses, Mary is not certain that it is as easy as that. As she pushes to investigate the crime, Mary discovers some oddities that point to another potential suspect, though the police are not yet ready to listen to anything. Mary will have to work to protect her client while ensuring the truth comes to the surface in time. Scottoline delves deeper in the law with this piece, sure to impress those who have enjoyed the previous novels in this series.

Returning home one evening, Jack Newlin finds his wife, Honor, dead on the floor. Being a lawyer, Jack understands the law and is fairly certain he knows who killed his wife, choosing to stage the scene to make it look as though he is the culprit and calls the police to arrest him. To round out a solid conviction, Jack hires Mary DiNunzio, of Rosato & Associates, to defend him. Mary takes the case, though she is a rookie in criminal defence, as her boss is vacationing and she wants to prove her worth. This looks like an open and shut case, at least on the surface.

Mary doubts her client’s pleas of guilt and begins investigating herself. What she uncovers is a set of facts that points squarely to another suspect. Weighing the ethics of trying to defend a man she knows is innocent but who is shielding another, Mary begins to push for the true murderer to come forward, though there is little help from Jack. Mary will have to use all her skills to coax out a confession from the true killer or send an innocent man to death row. There has to be a way and Mary is determined to find it, if only for the sake of justice. Another sensational book by Lisa Scottoline that pulls on all the strings to ensure a stellar piece of writing.

The varied writing style and plot presentation by Lisa Scottoline presents a great series for readers to enjoy. There is nothing like the perspectives offered up in these books to keep the readers on their toes and shows how versatile the legal profession ca be. A strong narrative base helps keep things moving, as the characters enrich both the story and their own development repeatedly. I could not ask for something greater, with plot twits and turns that help keep the book from being too predictable. There is so much going on, though it is not difficult to keep it all running smoothly, given a little mental effort. I am eager to see where things are headed, as I keep bingeing this series that is so rich with legal matters.

Kudos, Madam Scottoline, for dazzling once again.

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