Dead Money by Jakob Kerr

Published by Bantam on January 28, 2025

Dead Money is an engaging whodunit set in the world of venture capital and technology startups. Trevor Canon is the CEO of Journy, a company that seems to combine Lyft-like services with Lime-like rentals. Journy has not yet gone public but is expected to make Canon even wealthier when it does.

Canon is murdered in his office while he’s working late. Shortly before his murder, Canon changed his will to specify that, in the event of his murder, his shares in Journy could not be distributed to other investors in the company until the murderer is convicted.

The company’s executives each own a piece of the company, as does Hammersmith Venture, the venture capital firm that financed Journy’s startup. Journy’s five key executives carried keycards that would have provided access to the elevator leading to the CEO’s office, making them the prime suspects.

Mackenzie Clyde is a lawyer employed by Hammersmith Venture. Mackenzie does not perform traditional legal work. She investigates and troubleshoots problems, reporting directly to the firm’s CEO, Roger Hammersmith. Mackenzie is not impressed by the tech industry, which she describes as “a giant, soulless, self-propelling machine that runs on its own bullshit.” Sounds about right.

Intermittent flashbacks provide insight into Mackenzie’s nature. She grew up feeling freakish because of her unusual height. She took refuge in basketball until a male student who read and copied her essay falsely claimed that she copied his work. School officials knew the kid was lying but his father was rich and important so they suspended Mackenzie (but not the male) from extracurricular activities. That experience might cause some people to resent the privilege that attends wealth, but it motivated Mackenzie to acquire wealth of her own.

Mackenzie’s mother taught her to seize opportunities — specifically, opportunities to become wealthy — because power is the only shield against the powerful. Mackenzie went to law school and accepted a job with a Big Law firm. Before she started, she met Eleanor Eden, a woman who wrote a bestselling book about how women can shatter the glass ceiling. Mackenzie called out the book as bullshit, earning Eleanor’s admiration. Eleanor admits the book was full of nonsense but writing it was an end to a means.

Eleanor advised Mackenzie to ditch Big Law and move to the West, where opportunities for success abound. Mackenzie took a job as in-house lawyer with Hammersmith Venture. How she became Roger Hammersmith’s personal fixer is a mystery I won’t spoil.

In fact, saying much more about the plot would risk spoiling it. It is enough to know that Hammersmith designates Mackenzie as his liaison to the FBI, which takes over the investigation of Trevor’s murder. Mackenzie works closely with Agent Jameson Danner, whose father is a wealthy senator, as they interview the prime suspects and work their way to a reveal of the killer’s identity.

Although three of the four key characters — Mackenzie, her mother, and Eleanor — are morally suspect, they all justify their actions with the conviction that opportunities are meant to be seized, even if others must suffer. This seems suspiciously similar to the philosophies that drive Silicon Valley startups and Big Law, philosophies that Mackenzie seems to find appalling, but Mackenzie’s beliefs are more nuanced (and less admirable) than they first appear.

Danner at least is law-abiding, but he suffers from the usual law enforcement belief that using other people to build a criminal case is always justified — all the more so if the manipulation advances his career. Fortunately, fictional characters don’t need to be morally stalwart to be interesting. Whether they are right or wrong, the characters act consistently with their beliefs. I can’t say I cared about any of the characters by the novel’s end, but I didn’t dislike any of them, and I admired Jakob Kerr’s willingness to take chances with characters who might turn off readers with their unsavory behavior.

I also appreciated an offbeat plot that doesn’t depend on a tough guy saving the day by being tougher than everyone else. Dead Money is carefully constructed to give the reader an opportunity to piece together clues in search of the killer’s identity. The final reveal is surprising and surprisingly believable. A clever reader might guess parts of the answer but I doubt that most will work it out entirely. Kerr nevertheless plays fair by giving the reader a reasonable opportunity to solve the puzzle. Those elements combine to make Dead Money one of the smartest crime novels I’ve read in the last several months.

RECOMMENDED

Chain Reaction by James Byrne

Published by Minotaur Books on January 28, 2025

Desmond Aloysius Limerick has quickly become one of my favorite action heroes. He relies on his wits more than his fists and isn’t likely to get into a clichéd action hero shootout. In Chain Reaction, Dez fashions a slingshot from a Y-shaped machine part and some rubber gaskets. His deadly aim, shooting nuts and bolts at bad guys, is unlikely but fun.

Dez is a gatekeeper. He has been trained to open doors and keep them open until the mission is over. That skill served him well in the military. He’s trying to live a more peaceful life now but, like most action heroes, trouble finds him.

The novel opens in Spain, eighteen months in the past. Still serving in the military at that point, Dez is supporting a British government effort to acquire a new drug that a professor claims will cure opioid addictions. Dez manages to thwart thieves who want to steal the formula while simultaneously outing the professor as a fraud. Being a guy who lets bygones be bygones, Dez allows the professor’s beautiful assistant to escape.

The assistant is Catalina Valdivia. In the present, Cat is scoping out a convention center in anticipation of committing a crime when she learns that Dez will be there, sitting in with a jazz band. A band member texted Dez to ask for his help, or so Dez believes. Soon after his arrival, the convention center is occupied by terrorists who threaten to (and do) kill people if they venture outside of the buildings.

The terrorists are demanding the return of a Russian spy ship that has been captured by the US and Turkey. They’re using a jamming device to prevent anyone in the convention center from using wireless signals to call for help, but Dez knows his way around electronics and manages to put in a call to the FBI. Agent Stella Ansara appreciates his help despite Dez’s insistence on doing things his own way, especially after he manages to make it reasonably safe for the FBI to enter the center. He gets a capable if reluctant assist from Cat, who eventually ends up in his bed, as do many of the women Dez encounters.

The terrorists are a cover for targeted assassinations of people who have been lured to the convention center, including Dez. The assassinations have been orchestrated by a high-priced group of killers that includes Liv Gelman. Dez recognizes that the convention center has been breached by another gatekeeper and believes that Liv is the only person (apart from himself) who has that set of skills. Liv is one of Dez’s many former lovers. He’s surprised to learn that she is still active, given his belief that he had killed her.

I enjoy the Dez Limerick novels both for the unique nature of the series protagonist and for the perfect balance that James Byrne manages between humor and thrills. For example, when Dez is taken into custody, he’s “given a perfectly fine cup of coffee and, oddly enough, some surprisingly good snickerdoodle cookies while he’s inside. As interrogations go, this one is top drawer.” Nothing much bothers Dez.

In fact, Dez’s nonchalant attitude about danger — he jokes his way from one violent encounter to the next — makes it easy for the reader to enjoy Dez’s company and to overlook the unlikely nature of the plot. It’s rare to encounter a modern thriller that doesn’t tell a farfetched story, but eyerolls are minimized when an infusion of humor signals the reader that it isn’t meant to be taken seriously.

Chain Reaction is smart, engaging, and funny. It also delivers the thrills that thriller junkies crave. This is the third novel in the series and I've enjoyed them all. Readers who haven't followed the series can read this novel as a standalone without missing important context.

RECOMMENDED

To Save the Man by John Sayles

Published by Melville House on January 21, 2025

The story told in To Save the Man culminates (more or less) with the Wounded Knee Massacre, yet the massacre itself occupies only a few pages. Readers who want to learn more about the tragic event (and even those who don’t) would benefit from reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.

To Save the Man's focus is on a school for Native American children who were sent by their families (under durress) to learn English and the white man’s ways. Jacques LaMere sends his son Antoine because the government will not recognize Jacques, whose father was a French Canadian, as an enrolled member of the Ojibwe unless his child is in an Indian school.

Indian schools were part of the disastrous federal policy of assimilating Indians — meaning, making them more like white people — or killing them. After Antoine takes a train to Pennsylvania, the story follows Antoine’s adaptation to life at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. The school is run by Captain Richard Henry Pratt, whose motto is: “To save the man, we must kill the Indian.” Students were not allowed to speak their own language, pray to their own god, or follow their own customs, lest they not learn to be white. After all, white people are civilized and Indians aren’t — just ask the white people.

Most Indians have been herded onto reservations, but the government’s latest plan is to take the reservation land, divide it into allotments, and deed an allotment to enrolled tribal members. The expectation, of course, is that Indians can be manipulated into selling their land to white people for less than it is worth (which isn’t much), making this yet another scheme to benefit white people at the expense of their nonwhite victims. No doubt the robber barons who ran the country at the time thought they were making America great again.

The novel’s background is familiar, but it is always worth remembering how tragically out nation has treated nonwhite people, Native Americans first among them. Unfortunately, the story adds little to the background. We meet a Paiute known as the Messiah, who has had a vision of a “great upheaval” that will restore the buffalo and swallow the white men, thus returning the Earth to “how it was before the whites came.” At the Creator’s direction, the Messiah teaches people a “ghost dance” that will hasten the upheaval. We also spend a few pages in the vicinity of Sitting Bull, just before he is killed by the police.

We meet other students, including Herbert Sweetcorn, Jesse Echohawk, Clarence Regal, and a young man known as Trouble. Some students are quick to learn but feel conflicted about the use they should make of their knowledge. Some students have adventures of their own, including fleeing from the school and riding on freight trains until they get caught. Some students have visions of romance. Miss Redbird, a teacher at the school, feels like a traitor for speaking to children in English who can’t understand her.

The story flits from character to character, never spending enough time with any of them to permit full development. The novel feels like a collection of characters in search of a meaty story. Each has a small story that illustrates the American government’s crappy treatment of Indians, but the stories fail to add up to anything larger.

The ghost dances eventually spook white soldiers into slaughtering hundreds of Indians at Wounded Knee. Perhaps John Sayles wanted to avoid glorifying the massacre, but in doing so, he deprived the scene of its inherent drama. Much the same can be said of the rest of the story. It’s interesting but lacks the forceful telling that such a horrifying time in American history deserves. Fiction can reveal new truths about history, but To Save the Man reveals little that most people who pay attention to history don’t already know. The novel nevertheless has value as a reminder of white America’s past that many would prefer to bury.

RECOMMENDED WITH RESERVATIONS

A True Verdict by Robert Rotstein

Published by Blackstone Publishing on January 14, 2025

A True Verdict milks the comedic side of people whose political viewpoints dictate their opinions about subjects that have nothing to do with politics. A discharged employee’s claim of whistleblower retaliation and race discrimination is turned upside down by the novel’s end. Robert Rotstein uses melodrama and silly plot twists to lighten the story, but by the end, sharply divided jurors share an aha moment and unite in a mutual desire for justice — whatever that turns out to be.

Told from multiple points of view, the story follows jury deliberations at the end of a civil trial. Most chapter narrators are jurors, although significant contributions are made by the lawyers, the judge, a judge’s law clerk, a lawyer’s assistant, and a blogger. Occasional excerpts from transcripts acquaint the reader with key trial testimony.

The plaintiff is Ellison Picard. Both his first and last names will be recognizable to science fiction fans. Picard is a young Black man with a spinal fracture that confines him to a wheelchair.

Picard worked for MediMiracle as a statistician. MediMiracle is a startup drug company that has developed only one product, but it will be revolutionary and extraordinarily profitable if it works. The company claims that the drug cures all addictions — drugs, alcohol, sex, whatever. If the product works, it will clearly save lives.

Picard claims he reviewed the drug’s post-approval testing data and discovered a life-endangering side effect that is disproportionately harmful to Black patients. He claims he blew the whistle, that he was fired for doing so, and that the company invented a story about his violent behavior to justify his discharge. He sued the company for race discrimination and for violating a law that protects whistleblowers.

The company claims it fired Picard because he attacked his employer’s CEO in the company’s lobby. Like many disputes that go to trial, the truth depends on which side’s witnesses the jury believes.

After a transcript excerpt sets the scene, the story begins with the eight jurors filing out of the courtroom. Picard’s lawyer, M. Bailey Klaus, introduces the reader to MediMiracle’s CEO and founder, Peyton Burke, “a Forbes Magazine billionaire, stylish, attractive, and not yet forty years old” who “doesn’t fear losing. What mega-rich sociopath does?”

The lawyer representing MediMiracle and Burke does fear losing. She worked under Klaus’ supervision at his former firm before she stole his clients. Her performance in the trial will either enhance or destroy her self-esteem, not to mention her continued employment if she costs her firm its biggest client.

We then meet a quirky group of jurors. Two will not last long after they are caught in an amusing violation of the rules governing juror fraternization. The remaining jurors are a veterinary technician, a scientist, a retiree who is fighting a losing battle against a lung disease, a cleaner who has been a naturalized citizen for two decades, a far-right furniture store owner, and a far-left editor. They disagree about everything, sometimes with colorful language. One juror sees Burke as an admirable role model for women while another regards her as an arrogant bitch.

The political opinions of the jurors who have any are exaggerated for comedic effect. Even funnier are the jurors who base their decisions on factors that are just as irrelevant as politics. The cleaner brings the most common sense and the least prejudice to the jury room.

Much of the story involves the bickering of jurors who initially have difficulties setting aside their preconceptions about the parties, the lawyers, and each other. Additional humor comes from the issues that sidetrack the jury. In my favorite example, a juror explains that facial expressions are indicative of lying by telling detailed stories about relatives or boyfriends who made those expressions.

The story touches upon serious questions of racial identity, racism, and corporate disregard of employees' rights. It uses those questions as a backdrop for humor, not to explore burning social issues. Some readers might find some of the humor to be offensive, but Robert Rotstein offends the left and right with equal vigor. Readers who relax and laugh at the parts they find funny will probably like the book in the end.

Subplots include Klaus’ misunderstanding of his assistant’s feelings about him and the law clerk’s hilarious attempts to influence the judge’s decisions in the case. They add to the story’s goofiness.

A True Verdict could be used to teach a course in small-group decision-making. Each juror has a different style. One is pushy. One is insecure. One is accusatory. One is timid. They have almost nothing in common except a desire to carry out a civic duty as best they can.

Will the jurors set aside their differences and dig through the evidence until they find something they can agree to be true? The story is too biting to be pollyannish, but it’s told with good humor. It pokes fun at people of all political persuasions while reflecting the hope that most people can overcome divisive issues and behave decently when it matters.

RECOMMENDED

Presumed Guilty by Scott Turow

Published by Grand Central Publishing on January 14, 2025

My favorite novels about the nature of law and justice are The Ox-Bow Incident and A Covenant with Death. My favorite novels that mock the legal system are Bleak House and A Frolic of His Own. My favorite novel about a trial is To Kill a Mockingbird. My favorite legal thriller is Presumed Innocent. I highly recommend them all.

Published in 1987, Presumed Innocent told the story of Rusty Sabin, a prosecutor who was wrongly accused of killing an illicit lover. Sabin, by then an appellate judge, was accused of killing his wife in the follow-up novel, 2010’s Innocent. Presumed Guilty marks Sabin’s third starring role, this time as a defense attorney rather than a defendant.

The categories I invented for my list of favorite novels about the law overlap. All are represented in Presumed Guilty. Sabin entertains the reader with his hard-earned opinions about the relationship between law and justice. At times, the novel mocks the legal system, although Scott Turow does so by depicting it accurately. The system too often mocks itself.

Rusty Sabin respects the law but has been known to break it. He is easily forgiven for harmless and well-intended transgressions. Given his experiences, Sabin harbors an understandable contempt for those who place the freedom of others at risk by undermining rights that are essential to a fair trial.

Through Sabin, Turow spotlights the criminal justice system’s imperfections and explains why they impair an accused’s opportunity to have a fair shake against the government. Without lecturing, he identifies social problems — racism, the growing belief that facts are whatever you want them to be — and illustrates how they stain the justice system.

Turow also mocks prosecutors who see themselves as avenging warriors, a self-important conception that excuses any violation of rules that stand in the way of a conviction. Turow reminds us that prosecutors have a dark history of excluding Blacks from juries, hiding exculpatory evidence, and violating court orders to keep silent about inadmissible evidence, among other offenses.

While Presumed Guilty thus earns praise for its astute analysis of a flawed legal system, it also excels as a legal thriller. It isn’t as fresh or astonishing as Presumed Innocent, but it tells a compelling story that, like many legal thrillers, centers upon a whodunit mystery. Is the defendant guilty and, if not, can the reader identify the true culprit? As is often the case in the real world, evidence is murky and open to interpretation. Turow lets the suspense build before the reader learns the (somewhat) surprising and (mostly) plausible truth.

Because this is how Sabin’s life has gone, the story centers on a crime that touches his family. Sabin has retired and is living in a quiet place outside of Kindle County. He lives with Bea and her adopted son Aaron. On Sabin’s 75th birthday, Bea agreed to marry him, but they haven’t set a date.

Aaron is a 22-year-old Black man who abused drugs during his teens. He was joined in that addiction by Mae Potter, with whom he fell madly in love. Mae has a streak of wildness that, combined with narcissism, compulsive behavior, and moments of deep depression, make her a difficult girlfriend and a challenge to her family’s high place in the county’s social hierarchy.

Mae’s grandfather, Mansfield “Mansy” Potter, is Sabin’s best friend in the county. Mae’s father, Harrison “Hardy” Potter, is the county’s prosecuting attorney. Sabin tolerates Hardy for the sake of his friendship with Hardy’s father.

Aaron is on probation because he was arrested while holding Mae’s drugs. He isn’t allowed to leave the county. Sabin becomes concerned when Aaron is late returning from a camping trip with Mae. He will be forced to report Aaron’s absence if he doesn’t come home. Although Aaron finally returns, Mae doesn’t. Nor does Aaron seem overly concerned about her disappearance.

Aaron will be charged with Mae’s murder when her decomposing body is found in her wrecked car some weeks later. It doesn’t help that he apparently flees when the body is discovered, only to be arrested when he makes a mysterious appearance at the place where Mae’s body was found. Was he there to destroy evidence, as the prosecutor contends?

A pathologist concludes that Mae died of strangulation. Against his better judgment, Sabin agrees to represent Aaron for lack of a more skilled and affordable alternative. I doubt any lawyer who has never defended a murder case would start by representing his fiancé’s adopted son, but Turow creates a background that makes the representation plausible, if not inevitable. Anyway, the story just wouldn’t be as good if Sabin didn’t defend the case.

Turow plants clues that could incriminate other suspects, including Hardy and Bea. Sabin seizes the clues to create doubt in the prosecution’s case. The reader will use them to ponder the killer’s identity — unless Mae committed suicide, a possibility that the forensic evidence suggests. But how does that theory account for the absence of a rope around her neck when it was recovered from the wrecked car? And how did a similar rope end up in Sabin’s garage?

Courtroom scenes make or break legal thrillers. Turow is the genre’s master of capturing the drama of a riveting cross-examination. He also reveals the “inside baseball” of criminal defense, the strategic choices that lawyers make minute-by-minute in response to the changing trial dynamic. Courtroom politics are central to the story, given the prosecutor’s contempt for the judge — and for the law when it gets in the way of his self-righteous belief that only he is the true arbiter of justice.

Aaron might be Turow’s most sympathetic character. He has a tough but credible backstory. He has learned that he needs to embrace truths rather than run from them. That guiding principle makes him want to testify, pitting him against Sabin’s fear that the jury will want to convict him as soon as it learns about his history of drug abuse and probation violations.

This is Turow’s best novel since Presumed Innocent. It mixes a credible mystery with a suspenseful trial that leads to surprising revelations. Sabin digs deep within himself to resolve conflicting feelings about his relationships with Bea, Mansy, and Aaron. The story reveals powerful truths about the law but doesn’t let them slow the pace of an engaging story.

RECOMMENDED