Why I started Reading Alafair Burke's Books
One day at the library I was looking for enough books to get me through an unpleasant medical procedure. A man who was browsing the new books next to me recommended I check out the first three Samantha Kincaid Legal Thrillers. I'm glad I did. I had not read anything by Alafair Burke before, but I'd like to read more of her work.
Samantha (Sam) Kincaid is a Multnomah County deputy district attorney (DDA) in Portland, Oregon. Sam had been an Assisant U. S. Attorney in New York before her then husband Roger had gotten a job as in-house counsel with Nike in Portland, so she had moved with him. After they had moved, she discovered he was playing around and she divorced him. Her first DDA assignment was in the Drug and Vice Division (DVD).
Reviews of the Samantha Kincaid Legal Thrillers
Judgment Calls
In Book 1, Judgment Calls, Sam's first case involved an almost dead thirteen-year-old
prostitute, Kendra Martin, who had been dumped into the Columbia
Gorge after being raped, beaten and left for dead. The case had been
assigned first to the Major Crimes Team (MCT) when it had appeared
Kendra was dead. When she wasn't, Tim O'Donnell, a senior DA in the
major crimes unit, didn't want to prosecute the case as an attempted
murder. Instead he wanted to kick the case down to the general felony
unit, for crimes not considered serious, where everyone knew there
wasn't enough motivated manpower to prosecute the case thoroughly.
Prosecutors for general felonies tried to get rid of their cases
quickly by pleading them out for reduced sentences.
As Judgment Calls
opens, Sergeant Tommy Garcia, who was in charge of the
department's vice unit, is explaining the circumstances of the case
to Sam. Garcia wants Sam to take the case as part of DVD because
drugs and prostitution are involved and he knows Sam will put the
energy needed into the prosecution. Tommy and the MCT believe the
case is serious and they want to catch the bad guys and prosecute them to
the full extent of the law. Garcia arranges for Sam to meet with two
MCT detectives in the cafeeria, Jack Walker and Raymond Johnson, about the case. It turns out that Sam's old on-again, off-again
boyfriend, Chuck Forbes, is also in the MCT. His partner is Mike
Calabrese.
By the time the
meeting in the cafeteria was over, the way was paved to keep MCT
working on the case with Sam in charge of the prosecution. Her
relationship with Chuck is a subplot. So is Sam's relationship with
her father and her best friend, Grace. These characters appear in all
the books.
The other character
that appears in every book is Lisa Lopez, an attorney often called in
to defend indigent defendants. She is a naive “true believer” who
is sure all her clients are innocent, whether they are or not.
Naturally, she is called in to defend Frank Derringer, one of the two
men Kendra said kidnapped, raped, and beat her. She had identified
him from a picture, but she did not know who the second man was. Lisa
is Sam's nemesis in all the books I've read so far.
I won't say any more
about the details or outcome of this case. I will say there is lots
of action and the reader will see a detailed account of how both the
police and the prosecutors do their work and what a political
atmosphere they work in. The author does a great job in developing
the main characters and showing how difficult it is to convict a
suspect when most evidence is circumstantial. The plots are
complicated enough to keep one interested without confusing readers.
Missing Justice
By the second book
in the series, Missing Justice, Sam has been promoted to the
Major Crimes Unit after her performance in the previous book. This
time she needs to prosecute the killer of a missing administrative
judge who later turns up dead. Burke does an even better job with the
plot and characters in this book than in the last one. My experience
so far with Burke's books is that they are not simple cases of
finding one culprit. They are more like complex webs that need to be
unraveled, where characters rarely turn out to be as they appear to be, the crimes are committed by more than one person, and the victims may not be innocent themselves . The fun
for the reader is in trying to identify those who ought to be
suspects, following the threads of the investigations, and trying
to piece together what is found in the investigation before Sam does. There's also enough
suspense to keep the reader holding her breath until the end.
Close Case
The last of the
three books in the batch I read this week is Close Case, in
which a black news reporter, Percy Crenshaw, is murdered in his car.
A black woman has also been shot through her windshield by a white
police officer who claims it was self-defense, even though the woman
was unarmed. Later, there is a drive-by shooting that kills one black
woman and badly injures another who is a well-known black activist. A
major help in putting the pieces together to solve the crime was a
wannabe reporter –a news
staffer who had helped the police who were searching Percy's office after his death.
This was my personal favorite of the books.
Samantha Kincaid Mysteries (3 Book Series)Judgment Calls: A MysteryMissing Justice (Samantha Kincaid Mysteries)Close Case (Samantha Kincaid Mysteries)
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My Recommendation
I
would recommend these novels to all who enjoy thrillers, and who
can live with colorful language and main characters who
have affairs or shack up.
These books do not assume that all police and prosecutors are good
guys. You will see a very seamy side of life, but that comes with the
territory in detective novels and legal thrillers.
The author, Alafair Burke, is a former DDA in Portland who now teaches law and appears on television as a legal commentator. We can assume she has first-hand knowledge of her subject. I'm hoping to pick up another of her books soon. I was sorry to see the last one end.
The author, Alafair Burke, is a former DDA in Portland who now teaches law and appears on television as a legal commentator. We can assume she has first-hand knowledge of her subject. I'm hoping to pick up another of her books soon. I was sorry to see the last one end.
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