Reviewed by: BigAl
Genre: Mystery
Approximate word count: 95-100,000 words
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Author:
“V.S.
Kemanis is a California native and currently resides in New York. As an
attorney, she has been a criminal prosecutor for county and state agencies,
argued criminal appeals for the prosecution and defense, conducted complex
civil litigation, and worked for state appellate courts.”
Kemanis
also has three short story collections available and is working on the second
novel in her Dana Hargrove legal mystery series. For more, visit her website.
Description:
“Rookie
prosecutor Dana Hargrove is unexpectedly assigned to a team in the elite
Financial Crimes Bureau, investigating money laundering by a narcotics cartel.
Dana is led to believe that she cinched the promotion on her own merit, but
soon enough, a hidden agenda emerges. Her new boss needs a rookie for the
tedious job of tracing the dirty money through reams of bank statements, and
Dana is the perfect candidate—her close girlfriend Melanie works at the biggest
bank in Manhattan.”
Appraisal:
In the name
of the series that Thursday’s List
kicks off, Kemanis describes it as a “legal mystery.” I’m not sure I’ve heard
that description before. Legal thriller, sure, that’s what John Grisham writes.
Mystery, of course. There are a bunch of subgenres, but typically in any of
them you’ll have a protagonist who is attempting to solve a mystery of some
kind. Figure out whodunit, whatever
“it” is, often a murder. Then we have the police procedural or detective
fiction, which could be viewed as a mystery with a police detective or private
investigator looking for whodunit.
Thursday’s List has some qualities of all of these
genres, but doesn’t clearly fit in any of them. We’ll start with mystery. There
are many mysteries in Thursday’s List,
yet in a typical mystery novel there is one clear mystery: something happened
and the protagonist has to figure out the whodunit to complete the story arc.
We don’t find that here. It feels more like a thriller where someone is in
danger of some kind, whether physical or just threatened in some other way, and
the protagonist is the focal point as they try to work their way through to the
point where the danger has been neutralized. In fact, calling the book a legal
thriller would be the most accurate. However, it differs from the norm in that genre
because the lawyer at the center of the story is most often a defense lawyer,
providing legal protection for “the little guy” against the more powerful. Here
we have an Assistant District Attorney, a prosecutor, as the protagonist and a
less well-defined threat. With the District Attorney’s office investigating, we
also have a few qualities from the police procedural.
All of that
above was my exercise working out on (virtual) paper why Thursday’s List seemed subtly different from the books I’ve read
before, even though I’ve probably read more books in any one of the genres
discussed than in all other fiction genres combined. It’s past time to mention
that I liked Thursday’s List. A great
set of characters with some that I’m sure will be doing encores in future books
in the series, with the protagonist, Dana, my favorite of the bunch, which is
how it should be. A plot that is different, largely because of all the things I
talk about above, with qualities that would appeal to fans of any of those
genres.
Format/Typo Issues:
No
significant issues
Rating: **** Four stars
2 comments:
It sounds like an interesting book. Especially as it doesn't fit neatly into any one genre.
This is great! You've confirmed what I hoped for in writing Thursday's List--that I've created a unique genre. Thanks for the review.
V.S.
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