The Guilty Plea

June 6, 2011
A tired central plot and personal complications out of a daytime TV soap burden Rotenberg's second legal thriller featuring Toronto homicide detective Ari Greene (after Old City Hall). When Terrance Wyler "from the Wyler Foods grocery store" is found stabbed to death in his kitchen one morning, the obvious suspect is Wyler's wife, Samantha, with whom he was embroiled in a bitter divorce. Samantha e-mailed him a threat shortly before the murder, and their four-year-old son, who was asleep upstairs at the time, later informs the police that his mother visited him on the fatal night and told him she wouldn't be seeing him for a while. The prosecution falls to reluctant Jennifer Raglan, who's just stepped down as head Crown attorney to spend more time with her familyâand broken off an affair with Greene. Certain developments, like Raglan failing to challenge the defense attorney's claim that Samantha never threatened her husband in an e-mail, will leave not just lawyers scratching their heads.

July 1, 2011

Canadian attorney Rotenberg's second legal thriller asks whether the estranged wife of a Toronto grocery king took a murderous shortcut in settling the terms of their divorce.

Someone certainly had it in for Terrance Wyler. The co-owner of Wyler Foods was stabbed seven times and left to bleed out on his kitchen floor. Detective Ari Greene, working once more with lawyer-turned-cop Daniel Kennicott (Old City Hall, 2009), quickly settles on Samantha Wyler as the obvious suspect. The couple's negotiations over their divorce had been stormy from the beginning; Samantha had threatened Terry by e-mail the night he died; and she not only visited the crime scene ahead of the police but pinched the murder weapon. Ari's former lover, one-time head Crown Attorney Jennifer Raglan, recalled from obscurity to try the case, aims for a conviction on second-degree murder charges. But she's repeatedly overruled by insecure, wavering Judge Irene Norville, who, swayed by Samantha's lawyer, Ted DiPaulo, doesn't want Samantha separated any longer than possible from her 4-year-old son Simon, even though mother and child have never been close. So Raglan watches as Norville first grants Samantha bail and house arrest, then high-handedly arranges for her to plead guilty to manslaughter. The likelihood that Terry's killer will go free in five years outrages his parents and his two brothers, much-married Nathan and Jason, crippled by spinal muscle atrophy, who are mollified only because avoiding a trial will keep their darkest family secrets secret. When Samantha's day in court finally comes, however, she refuses to admit that she stabbed Terry. Now the stage is set for a trial guaranteed to make no one happy, except of course for experienced genre fans who find plea bargains anticlimactic and downright wimpy.

Ferocious, blunt-edged and finally unremarkable courtroom battles swirl around a cast of characters who consistently act as if they have more interesting depths than they're willing to show.

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July 1, 2011
On the eve of courtroom fireworks in his high-profile divorce case, Terrance Wyler is fatally stabbed in his kitchen. His soon-to-be ex-wife, Samantha, had both motive and opportunity, but beyond professing her innocence, she refuses to speak, leaving the search for the killer to Toronto Police detective Ari Greene. Readers of Rotenberg's delightful debut, Old City Hall (2009), will quickly surmise that Samantha isn't the murderer, but it won't detract from their pleasure in reading this one. Rotenberg is hewing to his formula, a hybrid of police procedural and courtroom thriller with a healthy dollop of melodrama. Both returning charactersGreene and the sprawling, diverse city of Toronto itselfand the new ones, including Crown counsel Jennifer Raglan and criminal defense attorney Ted DiPaulo, are wonderfully sketched and thoroughly engaging. Raglan's and DiPaulo's preparations and stratagems are insightfully presented, and Rotenberg's descriptions of shadings of difference between Canadian and U.S. justice will please fans of courtroom drama. A minor quibble: the plot of The Guilty Plea is very similar to that of Old City Hall. Here's hoping that Rotenberg, a gifted storyteller, will branch out a bit in his next book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)