Undertow (David Cavanaugh, #1)

by Sydney Bauer

When noted attorney Rayna Martin is charged with murder after her daughter's friend, Christina Haynes, drowns in a tragic accident and Christina's father, a powerful senator, wants vengeance ; blackmail and deception claim one more victim during a shocking trial.

• ISBN10: 042522290X
• ISBN13: 9780425222904
• Publish Date: 1 July 2008 (first published 1 February 2008)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 18 March 2014
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Berkley Books
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 439
• Language: English

Reviews

[ibeforem]

I was pleasantly surprised by this, since I had never heard of the author before. Bauer has given us a story of hatred and bigotry gone seriously awry, but with a twist. It’s not often you hear a story of a black person being accused of a hate crime, especially a well-respected female lawyer who’s also a single mom. Overall, the story moves well and is mostly believable, but the climax of the trial was way way over the top. The theatrics employed would never be allowed in a real courtroom, and the judge grew very liberal about what was and wasn’t relevant, seemingly to satisfy his own curiosity. On the plus side, I didn’t expect the final twist, yet it fit perfectly into the story. I was able to pick up that the author is not American (she’s Australian); a few phrases that aren’t used here, like "in hospital", snuck through.

I do have one teensy complaint about the audio production. It is absolutely rife with stereotypically bad Boston accents. Only select characters had the accent, regardless of if they’ve lived in Boston their whole life or not. Could’ve been toned down a bit.