Last Lawyer Standing

June 4, 2012
In Corleone’s overly busy third Kevin Corvelli mystery (after 2011’s Night on Fire), the criminal defense lawyer takes on two complex and dangerous cases, despite having become addicted to Percocet after surviving a stabbing six months earlier. First and foremost, Corvelli agrees to represent Hawaii’s governor, Wade Omphrey, after Omphrey’s mistress, Oksana Sutin, is poisoned with strychnine. Suspicion of murder would be seriously damaging at any time, but with an election looming, the unresolved homicide case is even more problematic. Meanwhile, the man who saved Corvelli’s life, drug dealer Turi Ahina, who’s been busted again, is facing serious federal charges, which leave Ahina little alternative than to cooperate with the government. Corvelli must also babysit an unlicensed investigator fleeing a mob contract, and confront rampant police corruption while identifying a shadowy criminal mastermind. Some tired genre tropes, including a love interest held hostage, cost the author some originality points. Agent: Robin Rue, Writers House.

August 1, 2012
Honolulu attorney Kevin Corvelli's latest pair of clients serve up surprise after unhappy surprise. Kevin has represented career criminal Turi Ahina, who once saved his life, so many times that he should award him frequent-client miles. So nothing could be more routine than the news that the cops have busted Turi in his meth lab. Threatening him with serious time, Assistant U.S. Attorneys William F. Boyd and Audra Levy demand that Turi earn his Get-Out-of-Jail-Free card by infiltrating the inner circle of legendary drug lord Orlando Masonet, whom neither Turi nor anybody else ever seems to have met. Then Turi's arrested for shooting Detective Kanoa Bristol, and Kevin decides that his best defense is to argue that Bristol and virtually the entire Honolulu PD were on the take. As if all these complications aren't enough, Kevin's landed a second assignment that's anything but routine from the get-go: to make sure that Governor Wade Omphrey never even goes on trial for the strychnine poisoning of Oksana Sutin, his Russian mistress. The governor has a cast-iron alibi for the time of her death, so Kevin's job is limited to convincing the cops--the same cops he plans to identify as crooks--that Omphrey didn't hire world-class hit man Lok Sun, recently spotted in the Aloha state, or anyone else to administer the fatal dose and, of course, to manage the press coverage leading up to the election. Keeping both the wisecracks and the satyriasis he showed in Night on Fire (2011, etc.) under relative control, Kevin makes only one new conquest, his opposite number Audra Levy, but still finds plenty to keep him busy inside and outside of the courtroom. More lawyers, law enforcement types, Class-A felonies and plot twists than you can shake a stick at. Instead of a map, Corleone should have supplied a score card.

COPYRIGHT(2012) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

August 1, 2012
Hawaii defense attorney Kevin Corvelli took a knife to the belly at the end of his last case, and now he gobbles painkillers like breath mints and is determined to keep a lower profile. Those plans dissipate when the governor's pregnant Russian hooker-mistress is poisoned. The governor was on the mainland at the time, but he may have hired the killer. Now he wants Corvelli to point the investigation in another direction. Simultaneously, Corvelli's streetwise buddy, Turi Ahina, is caught up in a DEA raid on a meth factory and faces life unless he goes undercover to help the feds nail the island's drug kingpin. That gives us an addicted narrator, corrupt politicians, Russian hookers, psychotic drug deals, a hit man who poisons his victims, and, oh yeah, Corvelli's high-school sweetie, who is Hawaii's new assistant district attorney. Laid out in an ingredient list, it sounds like a cliche omelet, but it's not that at all. Corvelli is a likable, pill-popping lawyer, and the secondary characters are Elmore Leonard quirky, never cartoonish. Throw in some sudden violence and loopy humor, and you have a fun, escapist reading experience.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)