The Eleventh Victim

June 22, 2009
TV personality and bestseller Grace (Objection!
with Diane Clehane) makes her fiction debut with a less than compelling thriller starring a heroine much like herself, Hailey Dean, a highly successful Atlanta assistant DA who loses her fiancé to violence. After a final courtroom triumph, the conviction of chef Clint Burrell Cruise for the murder of 11 prostitutes, Dean resigns her prosecutor post and moves to Manhattan, where within two years she has a new career as a therapist. When someone starts to murder her patients with an m.o. similar to Cruise’s, Dean becomes a suspect. Rather implausibly, neither the NYPD nor Dean is aware that Cruise has been released from prison after the reversal of his conviction on appeal. Little inconsistencies, like calling Cruise “the most prolific serial killer ever to stalk the city of Atlanta,” even though many would award that dubious honor to real-life child-killer Wayne Williams (referred to in the text), don’t help. 

July 15, 2009
A prosecutor's past comes back to haunt her with a new series of murders in this slick but superficial celebrity-penned thriller.

Hailey Dean has tried her last case. Although she identifies strongly with the victims of the criminals she prosecutes, the work is too close to home. Dean has been a workaholic ever since her fianc was murdered, a tragedy that sent her to law school and the Atlanta DA's office, and she needs a break. So after putting away serial killer Clint Cruise, she picks up the life she should have had—working as a therapist in New York City. But just as she begins to reawaken to life, and the possibility of new romance, someone starts killing her clients. To make matters worse, a keepsake from her old life turns up at a crime scene, implicating Dean. Mining her own life, including the murder of her own fianc, Court TV celebrity Grace (Objection!, 2005) has created a fast-paced thriller. But despite the action—which switches from Dean's viewpoint to the killer's cool fury—this fiction debut feels too formulaic and simplistic. The characters lack depth, with many of the minor players, such as a buffoonish judge, played as caricatures. And while Grace may know the ins and outs of the legal system, too many events defy belief.

While Grace's fame and the real-life tie-in will probably sell this book, its by-the-numbers plot and characters won't keep them reading.

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