Legal Thriller set in NEW YORK CITY

• Book: The Ex
• Location: New York City (NYC)
• Author: Alafair Burke

Review Author: tripfiction

3.5*

Author Alafair Burke has her criminal defence Attorney, Olivia Randall probing a triple murder charge against Jack Harris. But Olivia and Jack have history, they were lovers more than a decade ago and it is was Olivia who crashed and burned the relationship, leaving Jack psychologically damaged, sufficiently that he had to put himself into therapeutic care.

It is a complex plot yet the author renders it with clarity (unlike me, who is now going to give a quick overview of the storyline. Ready?). It’s like a circle dance of people killing people. Thus, Jack is accused of killing Malcolm Neeley. Neeley’s son,Todd, in turn, happens to have killed Jack’s wife Molly at Penn Station along with several other people. In Jack’s alleged killing spree, he also took down two other – seemingly innocent – parties. But this is not the Jack that Olivia believes she knows, thus extensive investigative work is needed to get to the truth.

And it all started early one morning with Jack’s attraction to a young woman in her finery, who is sitting in the middle of a park at Christopher St. Pier swigging champagne from a bottle and reading Jack’s favourite book: Eight Days to Die, (which happens to be set in that very area of the city. Coincidence?). He jogs past and finds himself rather smitten….

Jack is subsequently incarcerated in his home, on bail, whilst Olivia does some in-depth sleuthing. If you have seen The Good Wife, you will be familiar with the machiavellian sleuthing techniques of in-house private investigators at a law firm, together with general legal procedure in America. For us Brits this is pretty unfamiliar territory but well represented on many TV series over from the USA. And that is certainly a help here.

I learned a lot about GSR (gunshot residue), which can apparently lurk for long periods after the discharge of a gun. On the one hand I just had to ignore the unfamiliar abbreviations used by the police and investigators, from NYPD (ok, I know that one), from MDC to ADA to DUI and so forth, an anathema to me. But on the other hand it added to the buzz of the real New York City (the setting, only slightly modified by the author, where the book is well and truly set).

Olivia is a hard nut, but not quite as hard-living as other characters in the judiciary of fiction (the odd bottle of wine and hangover to match are about as bad as it gets for her). Her great friend Melissa, the daughter of her boss runs Café Lissa. The author bemoans that the café doesn’t actually exist, and frankly I would have been there like a shot if it did!

A readable novel from New York Times bestselling author Alafair Burke that will transport you to the sharp world of due process and law in the city that never sleeps.

This review first appeared on our blog where we also talk to the author about writing and top tips for NYC

Back to book