Legally Dead

June 16, 2008
In this explosive first in a new suspense series from Edgar-finalist Buchanan, Michael Venturi, a deputy U.S. marshal involved in running the Federal Witness Protection Program, realizes a mobster he's in charge of, Gino Salvi, has been sexually assaulting and killing young girls in Flemington, N.H., where Salvi is hiding out. Fired by the Feds after Salvi takes part in an armored car robbery, Venturi and an old dog he's adopted head for Florida, where he and some trusted allies set upa private agency for staging fake deaths and fashioning new identities. While some of Venturi's clients appear to need a good lawyer rather than a faked death and new identity, Buchanan constructs some ingeniously clever scenarios for rendering these people “legally dead.” An expert at ratcheting up suspense and creating believable, flawed characters, Buchanan (Love Kills
andeight other Britt Montero novels) gets thisnew series off to a powerhouse start.

July 1, 2008
Michael Venturi is a U.S. Marshall working in the Witness Protection Program. When his superiors decide a particularly valuable mobsterwho also happens to be a pedophile should be relocated to a small midwestern town, Venturi vociferously objects. He is overruled, and when the mobster kills two young girls, Venturi becomesthe fall guy. On his own, he starts a new business: helping people escape their existing lives, from a rock star sick of the spotlight to an old woman whose would-be heirs want to have her declared incompetent. As carefully as Venturi hides his clients, they start to turn up dead. Who has tapped into his secret program? The Mob? A former colleague? Buchanan, a Pulitzer winner for her work as a crime reporter and the author of the long-running Britt Montero series (Love Kills, 2007), is a bit off her game here. Although some suspension of disbelief is always required in thrillers, Buchanan asks for too much: too many coincidences, too many convenient plot twists. Still, Buchanan has a devoted following, and her fans are likely to overlook one bump in the road.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)