The Man Who Loved Books Too Much - The True Story of a Thief, a Detective and a World of Literary Obsession
Bibliophiles themselves, reviewers clearly wanted to like The Man Who Loved Books Too Much. The degree to which they actually did depended on how they viewed Bartlett's authorial choices. Several critics were drawn in by Bartlett's own involvement in the story, as in the scene where she follows Gilkey through a bookstore he once robbed. But others found this style lazy, boring, or overly "literary," and wished Bartlett would just get out of the way. A few also thought that Bartlett ascribed unbelievable motives to Gilkey. But reviewers' critiques reveal that even those unimpressed with Bartlett's style found the book an entertaining true-crime story.
In 1915 Auguste Lupa, a mysterious 25-year-old chef, is asked to join the weekly homemade-beer-and-conversation sessions of undercover French spy Jules Giraud, who is on the trail of a master German saboteur with designs on the nearby armory in St. Etienne. At Lupa's first meeting with Giraud's group, a member is killed with poisoned beer. Convinced that this murder is the work of the German spy, Giraud enlists Lupa in finding the culprit. An attempt is made on Lupa's life, the armory is blown up, and the probity of the chef himself is questioned by the police before he brings all the suspects together for a confrontation and unmasking.
Fans of Lescroart will line up for his newest legal thriller, which takes place over a few stress-filled summer days in San Francisco. When a drug-related murder results in strained race relations in the city, events escalate until a drunken mob lynches a young black attorney. A young white man, Kevin Shea, tries with all his body and soul to stop the crime from happening, but his efforts are wasted, and an irresponsible photographer snaps a shot of Kevin that gets misinterpreted by everyone.
Mark Dooher has a successful legal career, a long-lasting marriage, charm, good looks, and money; but when he meets young, beautiful law student Christina Carrera, he wants her, too. The author of A Certain Justice (LJ 7/95) has Mark manage, through a series of devious manipulations, to rid Christina of her fiance, get her a job at his firm, and make her fall in love with him. But there is the troublesome matter of his wife, whom he cannot divorce because of his important professional relationship with the city's archbishop. Then his wife turns up conveniently murdered, and the resulting trial could turn out to be Mark's greatest challenge yet.
In his first collection of short stories John Grisham takes us back to Ford County, Mississippi, the setting of his first novel, A Time to Kill. Wheelchair-bound Inez Graney and her two older sons, Leon and Butch, take a bizarre road trip through the Mississippi Delta to visit the youngest Graney brother, Raymond, who's been locked away on death row for eleven years. It could well be their last visit. Mack Stafford, a hard-drinking and low-grossing run-of-the-mill divorce lawyer gets a miracle phone call with a completely unexpected offer to settle some old, forgotten cases for more money than he has ever seen.
