Woman with a Gun

October 27, 2014
Bestseller Margolin (Worthy Brown’s Daughter) stumbles with this overly complicated whodunit. At an exhibit of Kathy Moran’s photographs at Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art, budding novelist Stacey Kim is transfixed by a picture of a woman standing on a beach in a white dress, holding a gun. Stacey decides to ditch her East Coast life and travel to Palisades Heights, Ore., where Kathy took the photo and now lives. Flash back to 2005, when Kathy snapped the picture after coming upon newlywed Megan Cahill, whose millionaire husband, Raymond, was shot to death hours after their wedding. An outside prosecutor who shares a history with Kathy helps investigate Raymond’s murder. Back in the present, another body turns up soon after Stacey arrives in Palisades Heights, and she must unravel Raymond’s unsolved murder if she hopes to crack the new case and get the real story behind Kathy’s photograph. With too many characters clogging the story, an intriguing premise devolves into a disappointing mess. Agents: Jean Naggar and Jennifer Weltz, Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency.

July 1, 2014

In this thriller with a difference, the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph Woman with a Gun, showing a bride facing an expanse of ocean with a six-shooter held behind her back, sparks the imagination of aspiring novelist Stacey Kim--especially when she learns that the woman in question was suspected of killing her millionaire husband on their wedding night. What does the photographer know? Especially intriguing because this photograph actually exists.

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 15, 2014
A haunting photograph sets an aspiring novelist to sniffing out clues in a cold case with roots in an even more distant past.Kathy Moran's Pulitzer-winning photo is notorious not only because it shows a bride standing by the seaside with a long-barreled revolver in her hand, but because she snapped it the night the bride in question, Megan Cahill, was married and widowed 10 years ago. Palisades Heights investor Raymond Cahill's murder has never been solved, and Stacey Kim, the hopeful writer toiling as a receptionist in a Manhattan law firm, is convinced that the photo holds the key to the novel she hasn't been able to write. Before she can book a flight to Oregon to interview the principals in the case, Margolin (Worthy Brown's Daughter, 2014, etc.) takes his time relating the facts-which implicate both Megan and her abusive ex, Oakland Raiders running back Parnell Crouse-from the viewpoint of Jack Booth, the assistant attorney general who's been packed off to Palisades Heights to help Siletz County D.A. Teddy Winston handle the case. And, as if that weren't enough, the tale delves further back to Jack's first encounter with Kathy Moran five years earlier, when she was a young defense attorney he squared off against the time she defended Portland drug dealer Gary Kilbride on a murder charge while Jack dreamed about getting her into bed. Stacey's improbable search for the truth-isn't she supposed to be writing a novel?-eventually pays off in a best-selling nonfiction book for her and a satisfying solution for the rest of us. The Chinese box puzzle takes some getting used to, but it allows Margolin to deliver one of his cleverest cases while concealing his principal flaw-paper-thin characters-beneath constant shifts in time and case.

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December 1, 2014
This is hands down the best thing Margolin has written in years. He apparentlygot the idea for the book from a photograph of a woman standing by the ocean with a gun in her hand; fascinated by the picture, he decided to create a story around it. What he came up with might be a bit more convoluted than it needs to beits time line isn't exactly linear, and the story doesn't require such an elaborate setupbut the novel boasts characters who are more alive than Margolin's characters have been in a long time. The main story, the backbone of the novel, mirrors Margolin's own story: a young woman sees a photograph much like the one the author saw and determines to find out its history, but she doesn't count on wandering into a decade-old murder case. In terms of storytelling skill, the book hearkens back to Margolin's early, top-notch novels like After Dark (1995) and The Last Innocent Man (1981). It's a welcome return to form.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)