Issue #13

Blog #10-2015

Section: Book Reviews

Blogger: Joseph Clay

 

Book Details:

• Published: 2013
• ISBN:978-0-06-206991-7
• Hardback
• 312 Pages
• SRP: USA $26.99
• A Novel of Suspense

Sleight of Hand is the second book by Phillip Margolin I have read. He is fast becoming my favorite author as his work is outstanding. The first tale I enjoyed by Phillip Margolin was  Woman with a Gun, I reviewed it back in February.

Charles Benedict is an unscrupulous lawyer with a high IQ and also an amateur illusionist. Most of his clients come to him via the Russian mob.

Benedict is magical in the court room a good criminal lawyer. However things get weird when he ‘s on a case,  key witnesses disappear into what seems like thin air, evidence tampered with or missing, and other strange happenings that allow his client to walk free.

Charles Benedict has many adversaries in the courtroom, from the judge to Carrie Blair, prosecutor for the common wealth.

Carrie, shunned by many due to her wealth, but she loves her job, and not her husband Horace, who has the money.

Horace Blair is beyond rich and a powerful man in the business world with connections in state and federal government. Horace is older than Carrie, if you see them together you would think she is his daughter, but that didn’t matter, he fell head over hills for Carrie in court, and swooned her from the witness stand.

The two married , of course not before the pre-nup was signed. Carrie had a good job and could stand on her two feet, the pre-nup, she didn’t care for. Horace insisted so she added her own little clause to it. Carrie would receive two million a year for each year of marriage, payable after ten years, if in that time she stayed faithful to Horace and tells no one about the agreement.

Horace and Blair’s tenth anniversary was upon them, only days away. Carrie gets caught in a compromising position and suspects she was photographed coming out of Charles Benedict’s apartment one morning, nothing had happened, so he said, but the miss understanding could cost her twenty million bucks.

Carrie disappears before the payout, Horace isn’t concerned until the local authorities show up at his door.

Dana Cutler an ex-police detective, now a private investigator, has mental issues of her own. While infiltrating a biker gang her cover was blown, their payback was to hold her captive, gang raping her day after day.

Her payback, priceless, she got her revenge but the trauma left her unstable and she loses it when threatened by a men.

Dana returned from a wild goose chase that bought up questions. Who had paid her twenty-five thousand dollars to look for something that didn’t exist? Then there was the question of Carrie Blair’s disappearance, had she been murdered, if so by who, her husband?

Will Horace hire Benedict if charged with his wife’s death? What about the other bodies that keep turning up with the same MO, is there a Psychopath on the loose? What could be the KEY, to this mess that has everyone scratching their heads.

Phillip Margolin uses the above characters and more in this suspense novel that’s action pack and full of turns.

All the questions are answered in this story that flows well, is fast paced, with believable characters, making you pull for some and hate the others. The ending, well I’ll just say you gotta read the book.

Phillip Margolin has yet to disappointment me. I can always count on a great story that I can lose myself in. Sleight of Hand was no exceptions.

The plot is brilliant!

[Bloggers note: The book review of Sleight of Hand was originally published on 3-13-15 on Joseph Clay – Author Official Blog. The review was moved to this site 5-19-18.]

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