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Jay Porter #2
Pleasantville
WINNER OF THE HARPER LEE PRIZE FOR LEGAL FICTION
Wall Street Journal BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEY’S WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION
From Attica Locke, a writer and producer of FOX’s Empire, this sophisticated thriller sees lawyer Jay Porter—hero of her bestseller Black Water Rising—return to fight one last case, only to become embroiled in a dangerous game of shadowy politics and a witness to how far those in power are willing to go to win.
Fifteen years after his career-defining case against Cole Oil, Jay Porter is broke and tired. That victory might have won the environmental lawyer fame, but thanks to a string of appeals, he hasn't seen a dime. His latest case—representing Pleasantville in the wake of a chemical fire—is dragging on, shaking his confidence and raising doubts about him within this upwardly mobile black community on Houston's north side. Though Jay still believes in doing what's right, he is done fighting other people's battles. Once he has his piece of the settlement, the single father is going to devote himself to what matters most—his children.
His plans are abruptly derailed when a female campaign volunteer vanishes on the night of Houston's mayoral election, throwing an already contentious campaign into chaos. The accused is none other than the nephew and campaign manager of one of the leading candidates—a scion of a prominent Houston family headed by the formidable Sam Hathorne. Despite all the signs suggesting that his client is guilty—and his own misgivings—Jay can't refuse when a man as wealthy and connected as Sam asks him to head up the defense. Not if he wants that new life with his kids. But he has to win.
Plunging into a shadowy world of ambitious enemies and treacherous allies armed with money, lies, and secrets, Jay reluctantly takes on his first murder trial—a case that will put him and his client, and an entire political process, on trial.
Wall Street Journal BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEY’S WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR FICTION
From Attica Locke, a writer and producer of FOX’s Empire, this sophisticated thriller sees lawyer Jay Porter—hero of her bestseller Black Water Rising—return to fight one last case, only to become embroiled in a dangerous game of shadowy politics and a witness to how far those in power are willing to go to win.
Fifteen years after his career-defining case against Cole Oil, Jay Porter is broke and tired. That victory might have won the environmental lawyer fame, but thanks to a string of appeals, he hasn't seen a dime. His latest case—representing Pleasantville in the wake of a chemical fire—is dragging on, shaking his confidence and raising doubts about him within this upwardly mobile black community on Houston's north side. Though Jay still believes in doing what's right, he is done fighting other people's battles. Once he has his piece of the settlement, the single father is going to devote himself to what matters most—his children.
His plans are abruptly derailed when a female campaign volunteer vanishes on the night of Houston's mayoral election, throwing an already contentious campaign into chaos. The accused is none other than the nephew and campaign manager of one of the leading candidates—a scion of a prominent Houston family headed by the formidable Sam Hathorne. Despite all the signs suggesting that his client is guilty—and his own misgivings—Jay can't refuse when a man as wealthy and connected as Sam asks him to head up the defense. Not if he wants that new life with his kids. But he has to win.
Plunging into a shadowy world of ambitious enemies and treacherous allies armed with money, lies, and secrets, Jay reluctantly takes on his first murder trial—a case that will put him and his client, and an entire political process, on trial.
448 pages, Kindle Edition
First published April 9, 2015
482 people are currently reading
4722 people want to read
About the author
Attica Locke
14Ìýbooks2,184ÌýfollowersAttica Locke is a writer whose first novel, Black Water Rising, was nominated for a 2010 Edgar Award, a 2010 NAACP Image Award, as well as a Los Angeles Times Book Prize and was shortlisted for an Orange Prize in the UK.
Attica is also a screenwriter who has written movie and television scripts for Paramount, Warner Bros, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, HBO, Dreamworks and Silver Pictures. She was also a fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmakers Lab and is a graduate of Northwestern University.
A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter.
Attica is also a screenwriter who has written movie and television scripts for Paramount, Warner Bros, Disney, Twentieth Century Fox, Jerry Bruckheimer Films, HBO, Dreamworks and Silver Pictures. She was also a fellow at the Sundance Institute’s Feature Filmmakers Lab and is a graduate of Northwestern University.
A native of Houston, Texas, Attica lives in Los Angeles, California, with her husband and daughter.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 471 reviews
August 5, 2015
i have serious love for attica locke. i think she can do no wrong. i think she's basically perfect.
this is a genre/gender bending noir set in an enclave for well-to-do african americans originally set up in the 1940s in houston. the premise under which the city of plesantville was created is a bit iffy. there is nothing wrong of course and everything right for embattled jim-crow-era black people to want to have a safe haven for themselves. but then you have the pesky question of class, and you know that it's going to blow up in their faces at some point.
the bendingness comes from the fact that the story is seriously hard-bitten, with a male protagonist who gets attacked and beaten right left and center but still upholds the right and the good and doesn't give up. since i listened to this in audiobook and the voice artist is a dude, it was hard to remember that the book is written by a woman. also, not a whole lot of hard-bitten noir out there with black protagonists (, , others?), yes?
the story is about a homicide, and the narrative is riveting and beautifully paced. but then the book turns out to be about the deterioration of civil rights and voting rights, and the role african americans themselves may have played in this deterioration. meaningfully, it is set during the last term of the clinton administration and at the eve of the first g. w. bush administration.
it's also about the erosion of american democracy and the tremendous lure of corporate power, to which people succumb at the expense of values they hold dear -- which certainly requires a certain amount of ethical pretzling. the picture of america that emerges is nothing to laugh about.
i liked so much that locke adopted this beleaguered-and-unwilling-male-detective tone; that she appropriated a very male genre and rendered it flawlessly (and why why why did the press decide that it was better to have the novel read by a male actor? why not stick with the bendingness and have a woman read it?).
i loved that jay, the protagonist, loves his family and his kids so fiercely, and i love his rapport with his teenage daughter, which has, as it should, central place in the book. i recently read 's , at the center of which also lies a tender father-teenage-daughter relationship, and it's oh-so-nice to see black men portrayed as awesome fathers.
i loved that he owns a gun but the gun is never where he needs it when he needs it. well, except for once. but then no one dies.
this is a genre/gender bending noir set in an enclave for well-to-do african americans originally set up in the 1940s in houston. the premise under which the city of plesantville was created is a bit iffy. there is nothing wrong of course and everything right for embattled jim-crow-era black people to want to have a safe haven for themselves. but then you have the pesky question of class, and you know that it's going to blow up in their faces at some point.
the bendingness comes from the fact that the story is seriously hard-bitten, with a male protagonist who gets attacked and beaten right left and center but still upholds the right and the good and doesn't give up. since i listened to this in audiobook and the voice artist is a dude, it was hard to remember that the book is written by a woman. also, not a whole lot of hard-bitten noir out there with black protagonists (, , others?), yes?
the story is about a homicide, and the narrative is riveting and beautifully paced. but then the book turns out to be about the deterioration of civil rights and voting rights, and the role african americans themselves may have played in this deterioration. meaningfully, it is set during the last term of the clinton administration and at the eve of the first g. w. bush administration.
it's also about the erosion of american democracy and the tremendous lure of corporate power, to which people succumb at the expense of values they hold dear -- which certainly requires a certain amount of ethical pretzling. the picture of america that emerges is nothing to laugh about.
i liked so much that locke adopted this beleaguered-and-unwilling-male-detective tone; that she appropriated a very male genre and rendered it flawlessly (and why why why did the press decide that it was better to have the novel read by a male actor? why not stick with the bendingness and have a woman read it?).
i loved that jay, the protagonist, loves his family and his kids so fiercely, and i love his rapport with his teenage daughter, which has, as it should, central place in the book. i recently read 's , at the center of which also lies a tender father-teenage-daughter relationship, and it's oh-so-nice to see black men portrayed as awesome fathers.
i loved that he owns a gun but the gun is never where he needs it when he needs it. well, except for once. but then no one dies.
May 13, 2015
This is hands down the best thriller I've read this year, and I read The Girl on the Train.
I cannot stop reading Attica Locke. I tore through her two previous books, Black Water Rising and The Cutting Season, earlier this year. I was first in line at my library to read Pleasantville when it was released last month. Now I guess I'll just have to find a way to live my life until she publishes another—which could be a while, I'm guessing, since she also has a gig writing for the TV show Empire. Isn't it annoying when people are multi-talented?
In Pleasantville, Locke returns to Houston, Texas and lovable but conflicted attorney Jay Porter of Black Water Rising. Fifteen years after the events of that book, Jay is a single father of two and his law practice hasn't exactly taken off. He's busy enough, but he still hasn't made any money on the big Cole Oil case he won years ago. The aimlessness Jay felt in the first book still hangs over him like a fog. He can't decide how involved he wants to get in the political controversies and local crises that surround him. People in the community look to him for guidance and approval, but Jay never knows how much of himself to offer. After all, now he is the only parent his kids have, and he is once again torn between responsibility to his family and to the larger social sphere around him.
And the latest local problem threatening to pull Jay under is one that hits close to home: a girl not much older than his daughter Ellie has been abducted from a street corner on Election Night, after circulating political flyers for one of the mayoral candidates. When the campaign manager is arrested and charged in her disappearance, Jay finds himself, as he often does, embroiled in the case against his will. He's definitely in over his head trying his first murder case, but just like in Black Water Rising, the corruption and malfeasance go up a lot higher than he ever suspected. Jay is going to have to do a lot more than find the person responsible for the girl's disappearance—he'll have to dig deep into election politics, the elite world of wealthy donors and corporate players, to make sure justice is served.
Locke's books remind me a bit of the TV show Scandal, in that they make politics heart-poundingly intense. In summary they can sound like a big snoozefest—who cares if someone is rigging a local mayoral race? Who cares whose money is filling which politicians' pockets? Who cares if someone looks the other way in order to gain power and clout? Locke will make you care about all of those things. She will make you care about them so much you won't be able to turn pages fast enough. Here's hoping she plans to write many more installments in the Jay Porter story.
More book recommendations by me at
I cannot stop reading Attica Locke. I tore through her two previous books, Black Water Rising and The Cutting Season, earlier this year. I was first in line at my library to read Pleasantville when it was released last month. Now I guess I'll just have to find a way to live my life until she publishes another—which could be a while, I'm guessing, since she also has a gig writing for the TV show Empire. Isn't it annoying when people are multi-talented?
In Pleasantville, Locke returns to Houston, Texas and lovable but conflicted attorney Jay Porter of Black Water Rising. Fifteen years after the events of that book, Jay is a single father of two and his law practice hasn't exactly taken off. He's busy enough, but he still hasn't made any money on the big Cole Oil case he won years ago. The aimlessness Jay felt in the first book still hangs over him like a fog. He can't decide how involved he wants to get in the political controversies and local crises that surround him. People in the community look to him for guidance and approval, but Jay never knows how much of himself to offer. After all, now he is the only parent his kids have, and he is once again torn between responsibility to his family and to the larger social sphere around him.
And the latest local problem threatening to pull Jay under is one that hits close to home: a girl not much older than his daughter Ellie has been abducted from a street corner on Election Night, after circulating political flyers for one of the mayoral candidates. When the campaign manager is arrested and charged in her disappearance, Jay finds himself, as he often does, embroiled in the case against his will. He's definitely in over his head trying his first murder case, but just like in Black Water Rising, the corruption and malfeasance go up a lot higher than he ever suspected. Jay is going to have to do a lot more than find the person responsible for the girl's disappearance—he'll have to dig deep into election politics, the elite world of wealthy donors and corporate players, to make sure justice is served.
Locke's books remind me a bit of the TV show Scandal, in that they make politics heart-poundingly intense. In summary they can sound like a big snoozefest—who cares if someone is rigging a local mayoral race? Who cares whose money is filling which politicians' pockets? Who cares if someone looks the other way in order to gain power and clout? Locke will make you care about all of those things. She will make you care about them so much you won't be able to turn pages fast enough. Here's hoping she plans to write many more installments in the Jay Porter story.
More book recommendations by me at
February 6, 2017
WOW. Attica Locke. What a find (thanks, Jo!)
This is a seriously fantastic book in all the most important ways, and weirdly perfect for the times. The gross mendacity and political corruption at the heart of the plot - unpeeled layer by layer by our hero, Jay Porter, a grief-stricken and world-weary civil rights activist turned environmental-then-criminal lawyer - feels almost prescient in Locke's hands (although the novel was published in early 2015, it takes place in 1996).
Locke puts together a complex plot that is part murder mystery, part political thriller, and part family drama, and then drops it in the race-and-class stewpot of post-Jim-Crow, Bush-governed Texas (and, btw, the Clinton-governed U.S.). She makes it clear that the kernels of political disruption based on class and race divides, which we've just seen rock the free world in ways that feel both completely unexpected yet completely predictable, took root long ago, exactly like this: nurtured to life in a corrupt pool dominated by money, oil, greed, lobbyists, lies, PACs, shifting racial demographics, and a love of power that makes for strange bedfellows in venues both small and local, as well as, by implication and exposition, large and national.
Pleasantville ends on Election Day, 2000 - an election that the novel declares as the closest ever in history, which the pundits, the New York Times and the Washington Post, Locke tells us, are unable to call. The reader, of course, knows that Bush wins by a hair - proving one of Locke's central points - but we also know, and Locke knows we know, that Obama follows.
Reading this on November 20, 2016, however, we also know that what follows Obama is the other shoe dropping, the political pendulum swinging yet again, with race and class feeding into our political - and personal - lives in an even more extreme, more traumatizing, way.
Listen: this novel was brilliant, and gripping, and fantastic, before November 8, 2016. But after it, whoa. If it wasn't a story so well-told, with its various plot points tied together in a way that, almost miraculously, sidesteps cynicism, the theme "the personal is political" sounding a bluesy background note throughout, it would have been almost unbearable to read right now.
I'm so glad I did. And I'm now going to read all that Ms. Locke has written. She's just that good.
This is a seriously fantastic book in all the most important ways, and weirdly perfect for the times. The gross mendacity and political corruption at the heart of the plot - unpeeled layer by layer by our hero, Jay Porter, a grief-stricken and world-weary civil rights activist turned environmental-then-criminal lawyer - feels almost prescient in Locke's hands (although the novel was published in early 2015, it takes place in 1996).
Locke puts together a complex plot that is part murder mystery, part political thriller, and part family drama, and then drops it in the race-and-class stewpot of post-Jim-Crow, Bush-governed Texas (and, btw, the Clinton-governed U.S.). She makes it clear that the kernels of political disruption based on class and race divides, which we've just seen rock the free world in ways that feel both completely unexpected yet completely predictable, took root long ago, exactly like this: nurtured to life in a corrupt pool dominated by money, oil, greed, lobbyists, lies, PACs, shifting racial demographics, and a love of power that makes for strange bedfellows in venues both small and local, as well as, by implication and exposition, large and national.
Pleasantville ends on Election Day, 2000 - an election that the novel declares as the closest ever in history, which the pundits, the New York Times and the Washington Post, Locke tells us, are unable to call. The reader, of course, knows that Bush wins by a hair - proving one of Locke's central points - but we also know, and Locke knows we know, that Obama follows.
Reading this on November 20, 2016, however, we also know that what follows Obama is the other shoe dropping, the political pendulum swinging yet again, with race and class feeding into our political - and personal - lives in an even more extreme, more traumatizing, way.
Listen: this novel was brilliant, and gripping, and fantastic, before November 8, 2016. But after it, whoa. If it wasn't a story so well-told, with its various plot points tied together in a way that, almost miraculously, sidesteps cynicism, the theme "the personal is political" sounding a bluesy background note throughout, it would have been almost unbearable to read right now.
I'm so glad I did. And I'm now going to read all that Ms. Locke has written. She's just that good.
September 22, 2015
4.5 stars
November 7, 2014
Jay Porter has a full plate, and so his legal career has been set on cruise control. Money is the least of his worries; he is successful, and has won a very large case, though it hasn’t paid yet. No, his issues have to do with family, and with grieving. And with grieving. And with grieving. His wife Bernie died young and fast due to an illness that she knew she had, but had chosen not to share. She pushed him to follow through on his enormous case against the oil company that had sickened, even killed people in their own close-knit, middle class African-American suburb outside Houston, Texas. It was important to everyone that the families affected experienced justice. But now he wishes he had spent more time by his wife’s bedside and less in the courtroom. His self-hatred for the time spent away from his wife and two children during that final crisis has left him determined not to set foot in another court room. Not ever.
And so this sequel to Black Water Rising, the red-hot hit by this author, starts out ominously, as a vulnerable teen waiting at a bus stop wonders whether she should run from the car that is watching her, even though she is so far from home that she doesn’t know how to get back, or wait for that bus. Next thing we know, she’s been murdered.
But Jay Porter is still too caught up in his own personal situation to pay much attention at first. Bernie’s sister Evelyn helped him get Bernie’s clothes packed up and moved out, but he can’t look at her car. Can’t look. And the holidays coming around the corner, all the gut-punching emotion with which they are fraught, that stinks too.
At this point, I should let you know that you can’t read this yet. It won’t come out till April, but I got my ARC from edelweiss books a week ago, and I’ve been reading it obsessively, so now is the time to review it. I will post this again when the book comes out, but for now, you can pre-order it, or put it on your Christmas list. After the holidays have come, gone, been cleaned up and winter survived, wouldn’t it be nice to come home and find this heart-pounding thriller waiting in the mailbox to make your weekend better? And what a story it is!
And so, back to Jay Porter. Porter is holding Cole Oil to the award the courts granted to the many citizens he represented. His fee, 20 million dollars, will be enough for him to retire on. He can send his secretary into the retirement she longs for, and he can put his feet up and be a father to his kids. But oh, how he wishes Bernie could be there.
Meanwhile, his friends and neighbors are growing agitated about Alicia Nowell’s disappearance. She is the third girl from the community to go missing in the past few years. The first two were kept alive for a few days; their bodies were found on day 6, and the coroner ruled they had been dead for only 24 hours or less. So they figure that girl is out there, alive, somewhere. Volunteer crews are searching fields after the cops have been there, squaring off grids in professional fashion while others knock on doors, try to get information that the local cop shop hasn’t found. And in the midst of a mayoral race, hay is being made by the opponent of the traditional Black candidate. Because the neighborhood has been slowly, insidiously (to some) changing since the death of Jim Crow. Now young Black kids from strong families don’t have to live in Pleasantville to find a good house. They can move wherever they want. That’s good, right? But Latino families looking for good schools and good housing find reception that is sometimes tense as they ease into town, and the old guard realizes they may no longer be a unified force politically.
Disbelief and horror take hold when the grandson of the community’s most venerated elder is arrested for the murder of Alicia Nowell. Assuming that an error has been made and without a second thought, Jay, who by coincidence happens to be at the police station while Neal Hathorne is being questioned, strides into the interrogation room and announces that he is Neal’s attorney. He has no idea what a firestorm he has unleashed upon himself, and upon his family.
I am retired, and have the luxury of several hours of designated reading time every evening. It’s pretty sweet. But this book caught me by the hair and made me stay with it, modifying my schedule so I could see just what the hell is happening here. My e-reader followed me down to the kitchen. It followed me into the laundry room. I was cranky when the phone rang and interrupted my time with Jay. Because after all, we had to get him out of this mess, and what the hell is going on with his daughter Ellie? Good thing he is being a careful father so that we won’t have to deal with that old, hackneyed now-they’re-after-his-own-kid plot line. Jay is smart enough to realize his daughter fits the profile of the kidnapped and murdered girls, and he is looking out for his girl. We respect him for it, and I nodded with approval at the e-reader as I fed the dog, went out to get the mail. I broke or spilled things four times because I wasn’t looking at what I was doing; I was reading this book, because the book couldn’t wait.
If Locke’s fingernail-biter of a tale reminds me of the style of any other writer, it is of James Lee Burke, now an octogenarian who is unlikely to write much more. And although only Locke knows whether it is intended as a nod to that bayou living legend, she names the bereaved parents Robicheaux. I rather liked the touch, if that’s what it was.
So whether you order this book, request it as a gift, or buy it when it comes out, consider it a must read. This book is already creating a buzz six months prior to publication, and it is going to be a monster. Don’t let yourself be left out!
And so this sequel to Black Water Rising, the red-hot hit by this author, starts out ominously, as a vulnerable teen waiting at a bus stop wonders whether she should run from the car that is watching her, even though she is so far from home that she doesn’t know how to get back, or wait for that bus. Next thing we know, she’s been murdered.
But Jay Porter is still too caught up in his own personal situation to pay much attention at first. Bernie’s sister Evelyn helped him get Bernie’s clothes packed up and moved out, but he can’t look at her car. Can’t look. And the holidays coming around the corner, all the gut-punching emotion with which they are fraught, that stinks too.
At this point, I should let you know that you can’t read this yet. It won’t come out till April, but I got my ARC from edelweiss books a week ago, and I’ve been reading it obsessively, so now is the time to review it. I will post this again when the book comes out, but for now, you can pre-order it, or put it on your Christmas list. After the holidays have come, gone, been cleaned up and winter survived, wouldn’t it be nice to come home and find this heart-pounding thriller waiting in the mailbox to make your weekend better? And what a story it is!
And so, back to Jay Porter. Porter is holding Cole Oil to the award the courts granted to the many citizens he represented. His fee, 20 million dollars, will be enough for him to retire on. He can send his secretary into the retirement she longs for, and he can put his feet up and be a father to his kids. But oh, how he wishes Bernie could be there.
Meanwhile, his friends and neighbors are growing agitated about Alicia Nowell’s disappearance. She is the third girl from the community to go missing in the past few years. The first two were kept alive for a few days; their bodies were found on day 6, and the coroner ruled they had been dead for only 24 hours or less. So they figure that girl is out there, alive, somewhere. Volunteer crews are searching fields after the cops have been there, squaring off grids in professional fashion while others knock on doors, try to get information that the local cop shop hasn’t found. And in the midst of a mayoral race, hay is being made by the opponent of the traditional Black candidate. Because the neighborhood has been slowly, insidiously (to some) changing since the death of Jim Crow. Now young Black kids from strong families don’t have to live in Pleasantville to find a good house. They can move wherever they want. That’s good, right? But Latino families looking for good schools and good housing find reception that is sometimes tense as they ease into town, and the old guard realizes they may no longer be a unified force politically.
Disbelief and horror take hold when the grandson of the community’s most venerated elder is arrested for the murder of Alicia Nowell. Assuming that an error has been made and without a second thought, Jay, who by coincidence happens to be at the police station while Neal Hathorne is being questioned, strides into the interrogation room and announces that he is Neal’s attorney. He has no idea what a firestorm he has unleashed upon himself, and upon his family.
I am retired, and have the luxury of several hours of designated reading time every evening. It’s pretty sweet. But this book caught me by the hair and made me stay with it, modifying my schedule so I could see just what the hell is happening here. My e-reader followed me down to the kitchen. It followed me into the laundry room. I was cranky when the phone rang and interrupted my time with Jay. Because after all, we had to get him out of this mess, and what the hell is going on with his daughter Ellie? Good thing he is being a careful father so that we won’t have to deal with that old, hackneyed now-they’re-after-his-own-kid plot line. Jay is smart enough to realize his daughter fits the profile of the kidnapped and murdered girls, and he is looking out for his girl. We respect him for it, and I nodded with approval at the e-reader as I fed the dog, went out to get the mail. I broke or spilled things four times because I wasn’t looking at what I was doing; I was reading this book, because the book couldn’t wait.
If Locke’s fingernail-biter of a tale reminds me of the style of any other writer, it is of James Lee Burke, now an octogenarian who is unlikely to write much more. And although only Locke knows whether it is intended as a nod to that bayou living legend, she names the bereaved parents Robicheaux. I rather liked the touch, if that’s what it was.
So whether you order this book, request it as a gift, or buy it when it comes out, consider it a must read. This book is already creating a buzz six months prior to publication, and it is going to be a monster. Don’t let yourself be left out!
August 30, 2015
Attica Locke's prose goes down nice and easy, and her well etched characters draw you into the mysteries they inhabit. This is the second one of Locke's novels that I've read. I look forward to the third and beyond, regardless of whether she brings us back to the same cast of main characters or introduces us to brand new ones.
June 16, 2018
Excellent. A follow up to Black Water Rising, a young attorney fights for justice in Houston. I have read all four of Locke's books in the last two weeks. Her latest, Bluebird, Bluebird, won the Edgar Award this year.
January 12, 2019
This sequel to takes place in 1996, several years after the events of the first book. While it can be read as a standalone novel, I don’t recommend it. I actually give it a UTSR* of 3. Not having read the first book, I felt that there were too many references to people and events from it. In addition, case files of Jay Porter, attorney and protagonist in BWR, are stolen and the question arises as to if there is a connection with that case. Even though I had no trouble following the events of the current case, that I felt like an outsider without a full understanding of the story or the relationships that characters had with each other.
Pleasantville begins with the disappearance of a young girl goes missing from a predominantly black Houston subdivision on election day. The chief suspect is the campaign manager of one of the two mayoral candidates heading for a runoff election. Are the charges a stunt engineered by the opposing candidate, who just happened to be the district attorney, or is the case against him solid? Porter is hired to represent the defendant.
I enjoyed the story and really liked the political scheming and legal chicanery that goes on in this book, Still, I found that it lacked the spark that inspires readers to keep turning pages long into the night. It was worth reading, but I didn’t lose any sleep over it. Perhaps I would have been more engage if I had read BWR first.
My thanks to Lawyer and the other fine folks at the On the Southern Literary Trail group for giving me the opportunity to read and discuss this and many other fine books.
*[Note regarding the UnkleTom Series Rating (UTSR) Scale: Some people insist on reading series in order starting at the beginning. I believe that this is absolutely necessary with some series and unnecessary in others. In my reviews I assign books in a series a score of one to five in which the higher score denotes increased importance of reading the book in order. A series with returning villains, an ongoing story arc, and evolving family dynamics will rate higher than one where the plot in each book is totally unrelated to the others. As an example, a Nancy Drew book would be a one. There is no evolving story arc. Nancy hasn’t grown any older in fifty years and, face it, Ned is never going to propose to her. The Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, is a five. Reading the trilogy in order is essential to fully understanding and appreciating the story. One book picks up right where its predecessor leaves off and Fellowship of the Ring contains information that readers of The Two Towers really need to know. Besides, Tolkien originally wrote it as a single volume.]
Pleasantville begins with the disappearance of a young girl goes missing from a predominantly black Houston subdivision on election day. The chief suspect is the campaign manager of one of the two mayoral candidates heading for a runoff election. Are the charges a stunt engineered by the opposing candidate, who just happened to be the district attorney, or is the case against him solid? Porter is hired to represent the defendant.
I enjoyed the story and really liked the political scheming and legal chicanery that goes on in this book, Still, I found that it lacked the spark that inspires readers to keep turning pages long into the night. It was worth reading, but I didn’t lose any sleep over it. Perhaps I would have been more engage if I had read BWR first.
My thanks to Lawyer and the other fine folks at the On the Southern Literary Trail group for giving me the opportunity to read and discuss this and many other fine books.
*[Note regarding the UnkleTom Series Rating (UTSR) Scale: Some people insist on reading series in order starting at the beginning. I believe that this is absolutely necessary with some series and unnecessary in others. In my reviews I assign books in a series a score of one to five in which the higher score denotes increased importance of reading the book in order. A series with returning villains, an ongoing story arc, and evolving family dynamics will rate higher than one where the plot in each book is totally unrelated to the others. As an example, a Nancy Drew book would be a one. There is no evolving story arc. Nancy hasn’t grown any older in fifty years and, face it, Ned is never going to propose to her. The Lord of the Rings, on the other hand, is a five. Reading the trilogy in order is essential to fully understanding and appreciating the story. One book picks up right where its predecessor leaves off and Fellowship of the Ring contains information that readers of The Two Towers really need to know. Besides, Tolkien originally wrote it as a single volume.]
January 5, 2019
This is a truth that I must face: I do not like murder mysteries, detective novels, or police procedurals. I have so seldom read one that pleased me or was memorable that I should know going in that I am wasting precious time. It does not matter if the author can write. This one can and I gave her a point for that. It does not matter because I hate the cliche of the missing girl, the sexual predator, the clever cop/lawyer/whatever, the last minute save, the slang language.
No, I am an Austen girl, a Dickens girl, a lover of the language of Edith Wharton. I do not belong in the seedy, underbelly, heaven forbid realistic world that peoples these kinds of novels. I cringe and want to finish so I can get out of there. I already think there is evil enough in this world without dwelling on girls who are snatched from dark, deserted street corners, pregnant teenagers or middle of the night break-ins.
The political undertones of this novel did not improve it for me. Unfortunately, I had issues with that part as well. No use in going into those.
I am sorry. There is probably nothing wrong with this novel, the problem no doubt lies in me. But, please (self) stop doing this.
No, I am an Austen girl, a Dickens girl, a lover of the language of Edith Wharton. I do not belong in the seedy, underbelly, heaven forbid realistic world that peoples these kinds of novels. I cringe and want to finish so I can get out of there. I already think there is evil enough in this world without dwelling on girls who are snatched from dark, deserted street corners, pregnant teenagers or middle of the night break-ins.
The political undertones of this novel did not improve it for me. Unfortunately, I had issues with that part as well. No use in going into those.
I am sorry. There is probably nothing wrong with this novel, the problem no doubt lies in me. But, please (self) stop doing this.
July 5, 2018
Needless to say, I was so excited when I found out one of my favorite authors had wrote a new book. In fact, I discovered this by total accident and of all places on Facebook for God’s sake, so I researched further to make absolutely sure Attica did, indeed, write a new book. You can’t believe half the things you see on social media, and I wasn’t taking any chances. I immediately went on Amazon. . .and BAM! There it was! OMG, I was too happy! I didn’t hesitate. My finger depressed the Download Now button and it’s a wrap! Oh, and did I mention, when I have a favorite author, I don’t hesitate to pay whatever they’re asking for their download version. This novel carried a $12.99 price tag. No biggie ‘cause this is Attica. And she also writes for the hit show, Empire.
Ok, so imagine my surprise as I begin reading that I’m struggling to get through it. At the time, I wasn’t quite sure what was wrong? I’ve read all her books and always loved them, so what was the problem? After having read Black Water Rising, which was an outstanding read, I was all too happy to revisit attorney-at-law, Jay Porter. Quite a lot had changed in fifteen years. His daughter is now a teenager and he has a younger son, which if memory serves me, I believe Ben was a little baby at that time. (Please note, those fifteen years aged within the story, that’s not how long it has been since Attica’s last novel). Jay’s life had changed drastically in that time period, so much so, I was feeling his pain as if it were mine.
Jay was held a hero for bringing down Cole Oil and he was still riding high off of that win, although he was beginning to sour on the current case he had pending. While fighting and dealing with a new beast threatening the lives of his new clients literally, a young girl is found dead during Election Night. This hit a little too close to home having a young teen himself. Who on earth would want this young teen dead? Now Jay is faced with another dilemma. Someone on the campaign trail is accused of this young lady’s murder. Several of the political players have called upon Jay for his expertise and literally begging him to help defend the young man accused of this crime. Well, that is, one political figure in particular seeks out Jay’s assistance for his nephew, who is the one being accused of the heinous act. There’s murder, mayhem and political tug-of-wars so what’s not to love about this story, you ask?
I’ve pondered over that very thing and I have to tell you, I had several problems with this story. The first and foremost being it was entirely too detailed, to the point it became rather frustrating to concentrate on the story itself. Attica is known for her detail-oriented writing, which for the most part, I really enjoy, but she truly overdid it in this one. This novel reads like a screenplay or script for a movie, wherein you’d need to know where a character enters and exits stage left, but when you’re writing a novel, it isn’t necessary to place all those intricate details into it.
My second problem with the story is it was too well written. I know, I know that sounds absolutely insane, but let me explain. This book was so well written to the point I could find nothing wrong with it. There wasn’t one grammatical error, everything was so perfect—too perfect, if you will. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first to deduct points for shoddy editing, but when you write a book this perfect, one tends to not invest much time into the characters. It’s like who the hell cares about them? And that’s what upset me so because I truly respect and love this author so much. I absolutely found myself getting pissed with the overdoing of detail and the perfectness of the story. It got to the point I truly didn’t care about Jay, his issues and/or struggles and anything else. There was entirely too much detail and that drove me absolutely bonkers.
As an avid reader, we’ll tell you, the author must set up the story, so detail is needed then, and once we get where the story is going, our movie reel begins to advance in the mind’s eye. I don’t need the author to continually interrupt the flow of what my mind is processing with what a person wore; to how the weather looked and smelled; to the rips in fabric; the aftershave someone had on; to how a person held their cigarette. It’s too damn much! OMG, I was so done! Where was the interaction with other characters? Where was the dialogue? Ummph, and when dialogue finally came, which I was forever grateful to break up the monotony, more detail ensued and made me have to put a bookmark up, go back to where the character initially began speaking because I totally forget what the hell I was supposed to gleam from the conversation. People, that’s clearly too much detail!
Oh Attica, darling, I love you madly for your blessed writing skills, but sista, you did this book a terrible injustice. I didn’t love it at all. The detail you put in this novel made me disconnect from the people and storyline, and we both know that’s not what you’re trying to accomplish nor establish with your readers. For as much money as I paid, I did not expect this. I really didn’t and I’m a bit miffed about that. I don’t ever have a problem paying for books by authors I truly respect, but you’ve got to give me something a little better than this. Wow, I was not impressed, not at all.
I’m not sure what happened here, but Pleasantville did not please me and didn't live up to the hype surrounding it.
Ok, so imagine my surprise as I begin reading that I’m struggling to get through it. At the time, I wasn’t quite sure what was wrong? I’ve read all her books and always loved them, so what was the problem? After having read Black Water Rising, which was an outstanding read, I was all too happy to revisit attorney-at-law, Jay Porter. Quite a lot had changed in fifteen years. His daughter is now a teenager and he has a younger son, which if memory serves me, I believe Ben was a little baby at that time. (Please note, those fifteen years aged within the story, that’s not how long it has been since Attica’s last novel). Jay’s life had changed drastically in that time period, so much so, I was feeling his pain as if it were mine.
Jay was held a hero for bringing down Cole Oil and he was still riding high off of that win, although he was beginning to sour on the current case he had pending. While fighting and dealing with a new beast threatening the lives of his new clients literally, a young girl is found dead during Election Night. This hit a little too close to home having a young teen himself. Who on earth would want this young teen dead? Now Jay is faced with another dilemma. Someone on the campaign trail is accused of this young lady’s murder. Several of the political players have called upon Jay for his expertise and literally begging him to help defend the young man accused of this crime. Well, that is, one political figure in particular seeks out Jay’s assistance for his nephew, who is the one being accused of the heinous act. There’s murder, mayhem and political tug-of-wars so what’s not to love about this story, you ask?
I’ve pondered over that very thing and I have to tell you, I had several problems with this story. The first and foremost being it was entirely too detailed, to the point it became rather frustrating to concentrate on the story itself. Attica is known for her detail-oriented writing, which for the most part, I really enjoy, but she truly overdid it in this one. This novel reads like a screenplay or script for a movie, wherein you’d need to know where a character enters and exits stage left, but when you’re writing a novel, it isn’t necessary to place all those intricate details into it.
My second problem with the story is it was too well written. I know, I know that sounds absolutely insane, but let me explain. This book was so well written to the point I could find nothing wrong with it. There wasn’t one grammatical error, everything was so perfect—too perfect, if you will. Don’t get me wrong, I’m the first to deduct points for shoddy editing, but when you write a book this perfect, one tends to not invest much time into the characters. It’s like who the hell cares about them? And that’s what upset me so because I truly respect and love this author so much. I absolutely found myself getting pissed with the overdoing of detail and the perfectness of the story. It got to the point I truly didn’t care about Jay, his issues and/or struggles and anything else. There was entirely too much detail and that drove me absolutely bonkers.
As an avid reader, we’ll tell you, the author must set up the story, so detail is needed then, and once we get where the story is going, our movie reel begins to advance in the mind’s eye. I don’t need the author to continually interrupt the flow of what my mind is processing with what a person wore; to how the weather looked and smelled; to the rips in fabric; the aftershave someone had on; to how a person held their cigarette. It’s too damn much! OMG, I was so done! Where was the interaction with other characters? Where was the dialogue? Ummph, and when dialogue finally came, which I was forever grateful to break up the monotony, more detail ensued and made me have to put a bookmark up, go back to where the character initially began speaking because I totally forget what the hell I was supposed to gleam from the conversation. People, that’s clearly too much detail!
Oh Attica, darling, I love you madly for your blessed writing skills, but sista, you did this book a terrible injustice. I didn’t love it at all. The detail you put in this novel made me disconnect from the people and storyline, and we both know that’s not what you’re trying to accomplish nor establish with your readers. For as much money as I paid, I did not expect this. I really didn’t and I’m a bit miffed about that. I don’t ever have a problem paying for books by authors I truly respect, but you’ve got to give me something a little better than this. Wow, I was not impressed, not at all.
I’m not sure what happened here, but Pleasantville did not please me and didn't live up to the hype surrounding it.
November 19, 2023
4.5*
Better than the first one imo.
Better than the first one imo.
March 25, 2015
I’d been wishing for a sequel to "Black Water Rising" for the past 6 years (has it been that long?) and when "The Cutting Season" came out in 2012, I figured Locke was done with socially conscious attorney, Jay Porter. So when I finally got my hands on a copy of "Pleasantville," I was giddy with excitement and couldn't wait to find out what Jay was up to.
The story takes place in 1996, fifteen years later, and yes, the Houston attorney is back, but he’s not doing as well as I’d hoped. He’s struggling to raise his two children alone after the death of his wife, and he has yet to see any money after winning a big case against Cole Oil. When Neal Hathorne, the nephew of a prominent mayoral candidate, is arrested for the murder of a local girl, Jay begrudgingly agrees to represent him as a favor to the powerful family despite having little criminal defense experience. As a result, he becomes entangled in a web of political corruption and dark family secrets that puts a target on his back, but more importantly, his family's as well.
Locke's ability to weave politics and social commentary into a gripping sophisticated thriller illustrates what a masterful and intelligent storyteller she is. It's not a problem to read "Pleasantville" before "Black Water Rising," although purists like me will appreciate starting from the beginning.
The story takes place in 1996, fifteen years later, and yes, the Houston attorney is back, but he’s not doing as well as I’d hoped. He’s struggling to raise his two children alone after the death of his wife, and he has yet to see any money after winning a big case against Cole Oil. When Neal Hathorne, the nephew of a prominent mayoral candidate, is arrested for the murder of a local girl, Jay begrudgingly agrees to represent him as a favor to the powerful family despite having little criminal defense experience. As a result, he becomes entangled in a web of political corruption and dark family secrets that puts a target on his back, but more importantly, his family's as well.
Locke's ability to weave politics and social commentary into a gripping sophisticated thriller illustrates what a masterful and intelligent storyteller she is. It's not a problem to read "Pleasantville" before "Black Water Rising," although purists like me will appreciate starting from the beginning.
December 2, 2014
You can count on Attica Locke. PLEASANTVILLE is just as strong a book as BLACK WATER RISING and THE CUTTING SEASON. If you're looking for a strong writer who puts out the kind of books John Grisham wishes he could write, this is where you should be.
November 6, 2015
Lawyer Jay Porter is back after his introduction in Locke’s first book, Black Water Rising, where he tackled a murder case that found him embroiled in environmental politics and changed his life. Pleasantville picks up a few years later and Jay has become somewhat of a go-to lawyer for citizens in their fight against the dumping of chemicals in their neighborhoods.
Pleasantville, a predominately African-American neighborhood in Houston, Texas (in real life and in the book), is currently being represented in a lawsuit against a company that caused a chemical fire near their homes. On the eve of a mayoral election, a campaign volunteer goes missing Jay finds himself reluctantly involved in finding out what happened to her.
Attica Locke writes super-layered novels, so it’s almost impossible to cover everything in this review. Grief, greed, politics, environmental racism…it’s all here. What I love best about Pleasantville, and her other books, is that I never have a clue about who’s behind the mystery until she reveals it to me. The last pages of the book move at a lightning speed that will have your heart racing and tuning out everything else around you.
Pleasantville, a predominately African-American neighborhood in Houston, Texas (in real life and in the book), is currently being represented in a lawsuit against a company that caused a chemical fire near their homes. On the eve of a mayoral election, a campaign volunteer goes missing Jay finds himself reluctantly involved in finding out what happened to her.
Attica Locke writes super-layered novels, so it’s almost impossible to cover everything in this review. Grief, greed, politics, environmental racism…it’s all here. What I love best about Pleasantville, and her other books, is that I never have a clue about who’s behind the mystery until she reveals it to me. The last pages of the book move at a lightning speed that will have your heart racing and tuning out everything else around you.
April 4, 2015
The most thrilling account of local election politics and hustling for power that I've ever come across. This succeeds as courtroom drama, political thriller, showing how the real human/family suffering is used for point-scoring. As a murder mystery, it is perhaps not entirely successful (gets wrapped up a bit too quickly and unexpectedly at the end), but it's a very intelligent, well-written book.
March 24, 2015
I really liked Black Water Rising, the author's first book about attorney Jay Porter, but I like Pleasantville even more!
May 4, 2015
Fiction
Attica Locke
Pleasantville: A Novel
New York: Harper
Hardcover, 978-0-06-225940-0
432 pages, $26.99
April 21, 2015
Pleasantville is a historical neighborhood in Houston, Texas, “a planned community…built specifically for Negro families of means and class� in the wake of World War II, and one of its favorite sons, Axel Hathorne, has just entered a runoff election for mayor of Houston. The same night, someone is watching Alicia Nowell, a teenage girl who had been handing out leaflets door-to-door for the election as she stands on a street corner waiting for her ride, “still wanting to believe a way out was possible, but already knowing, with a creeping certainty, that this this night had turned on her, that her disappearing had already begun.� How’s that for a hook?
Pleasantville is Attica Locke’s sequel to the many-award-nominated Black Water Rising is back -- with environmental plaintiff’s attorney Jay Porter, this time dealing with the death of his wife, single fatherhood, inertia, and a break-in at his law office that occurs the same night as the election, the same night the girl goes missing. When Hathorne’s campaign manager is arrested and charged with the murder of Alicia Nowell, Locke’s compelling setup for this complex, character-driven legal and political thriller is complete.
Pleasantville has a complicated plot with lots of moving parts. There is a large cast of disparate, intriguing characters, liberally peppered with predators of all stripes. The pacing never lags, goosed along by artfully placed plot twists. The story is a highly entertaining brew of political and personal ambition garnished with journalistic, legal, and corporate corruption. All of which Locke handles beautifully.
The cynicism of the political horse-trading is breathtaking and will confirm all of your conspiracy theories. A good number of the cast are politicians and their consultants, including the reincarnation of Lee Atwater, a city council member who can “hear the whir of a video camera from a block over� and a mayoral candidate who began wearing glasses when she entered the race because “talk of her pale green eyes and the height of her stiletto heels starting getting too much play in the press.�
Porter’s floundering without his wife is touchingly conveyed. “There are things she knew about her family, not secrets so much as hard-earned intimacies, that she inadvertently took with her, leaving the rest of them to fend for themselves in this new, foreign land, daily meeting at the kitchen table, or passing in the hallway, without their shared interpreter.�
There is humor here, as well, spiced with sassy one-liners. At one point Porter concedes that “the breadth of his investigation is an ex-con skulking around Hollis’s [a suspect] place in a rusty El Camino.� Hollis’s place is one of those giant, generic apartment complexes with pretentious names. “This one has the nerve to call itself Beechwood Estates.�
Full of family secrets and political secrets, Pleasantville gives new meaning to the truism that the political is personal. For lovers of intrigue and suspense, this is the total package.
Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.
Attica Locke
Pleasantville: A Novel
New York: Harper
Hardcover, 978-0-06-225940-0
432 pages, $26.99
April 21, 2015
Pleasantville is a historical neighborhood in Houston, Texas, “a planned community…built specifically for Negro families of means and class� in the wake of World War II, and one of its favorite sons, Axel Hathorne, has just entered a runoff election for mayor of Houston. The same night, someone is watching Alicia Nowell, a teenage girl who had been handing out leaflets door-to-door for the election as she stands on a street corner waiting for her ride, “still wanting to believe a way out was possible, but already knowing, with a creeping certainty, that this this night had turned on her, that her disappearing had already begun.� How’s that for a hook?
Pleasantville is Attica Locke’s sequel to the many-award-nominated Black Water Rising is back -- with environmental plaintiff’s attorney Jay Porter, this time dealing with the death of his wife, single fatherhood, inertia, and a break-in at his law office that occurs the same night as the election, the same night the girl goes missing. When Hathorne’s campaign manager is arrested and charged with the murder of Alicia Nowell, Locke’s compelling setup for this complex, character-driven legal and political thriller is complete.
Pleasantville has a complicated plot with lots of moving parts. There is a large cast of disparate, intriguing characters, liberally peppered with predators of all stripes. The pacing never lags, goosed along by artfully placed plot twists. The story is a highly entertaining brew of political and personal ambition garnished with journalistic, legal, and corporate corruption. All of which Locke handles beautifully.
The cynicism of the political horse-trading is breathtaking and will confirm all of your conspiracy theories. A good number of the cast are politicians and their consultants, including the reincarnation of Lee Atwater, a city council member who can “hear the whir of a video camera from a block over� and a mayoral candidate who began wearing glasses when she entered the race because “talk of her pale green eyes and the height of her stiletto heels starting getting too much play in the press.�
Porter’s floundering without his wife is touchingly conveyed. “There are things she knew about her family, not secrets so much as hard-earned intimacies, that she inadvertently took with her, leaving the rest of them to fend for themselves in this new, foreign land, daily meeting at the kitchen table, or passing in the hallway, without their shared interpreter.�
There is humor here, as well, spiced with sassy one-liners. At one point Porter concedes that “the breadth of his investigation is an ex-con skulking around Hollis’s [a suspect] place in a rusty El Camino.� Hollis’s place is one of those giant, generic apartment complexes with pretentious names. “This one has the nerve to call itself Beechwood Estates.�
Full of family secrets and political secrets, Pleasantville gives new meaning to the truism that the political is personal. For lovers of intrigue and suspense, this is the total package.
Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.
April 3, 2016
given the electoral mayhem going on in the US right now, it was an interesting time for me to read this book and it felt like a good complement to the US's current election cycle. shenanigans, i tell you. shenanigans!
as happened with Locke's first book in the series (), i enjoyed this story but found it to have a few wobbles that took away from things for me while i read. Locke is great at character - i quite like when authors write convincingly the opposite gender to their own, and Locke does this well. and her supporting cast are interesting as well. again, the setting (Houston) and time (1996) are vividly portrayed. as a mystery, though, this did feel a bit clunky. while the level of manipulations going on were (sadly) believable, some of the incompetencies and conspiracies felt just a little bit too unreal. and also as in the first book, some of the plot threads just hung there.
Pleasantville was recently longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, so i was reading through that lens. and perhaps i have been tougher on the book because of that. overall, i did enjoy it - the book is a quick near page-turner, and a good bit of escapist reading which succeeds in pointing out the failings and vulnerabilities of American democracy.
as happened with Locke's first book in the series (), i enjoyed this story but found it to have a few wobbles that took away from things for me while i read. Locke is great at character - i quite like when authors write convincingly the opposite gender to their own, and Locke does this well. and her supporting cast are interesting as well. again, the setting (Houston) and time (1996) are vividly portrayed. as a mystery, though, this did feel a bit clunky. while the level of manipulations going on were (sadly) believable, some of the incompetencies and conspiracies felt just a little bit too unreal. and also as in the first book, some of the plot threads just hung there.
Pleasantville was recently longlisted for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, so i was reading through that lens. and perhaps i have been tougher on the book because of that. overall, i did enjoy it - the book is a quick near page-turner, and a good bit of escapist reading which succeeds in pointing out the failings and vulnerabilities of American democracy.
September 8, 2015
It was a long wait between episodes, but the wait was well worth it. Jay Porter, the likeable conscious lawyer is back and representing the Black community of Pleasantville, a section of Houston, TX. I am impressed with how well Attica Locke nails down the landscape of Houston, helps move the story when one is familiar with the surroundings and environment. Her prose is fast and easy with Jay being a great character to build a story around. Her pacing in this book was right on, with no superfluous activity and all action fitting in the mystery like a solid puzzle. For readers who like mystery, I would enthusiastically suggest this one.
June 20, 2015
A smart, well-written thriller, starring lawyer Jay Porter From Black Water Rising. When a murder occurs during a mayoral election, Jay gets involved defending the accused. Locke seems more interested in the politics than the murder, which is fine by me, but the ending becomes a little hurried when the crime has to be solved. It's a great read in a genre where it's difficult to find quality writing. I'd love to see what happens with Jay.
January 9, 2019
I am excited to finally read something by this author whose books have all won numerous awards including ones honoring Ernest Gaines and Dennis Lehane.
Unfortunately I read (bookclub selection) this one which is the second book first. Most likely because of that the first part seemed to take a long time getting things set straight. However by the middle of this story about Jay Porter, a returning lawyer struggling with the recent loss of his wife, working on a slowly plodding environmental case for many of adverse effected residents of Pleasantville a strong black suburb of Houston, Texas, really takes off.
Jay’s life and that of his 2 children become endangered when the environmental case runs headlong into ongoing Mayoral politics, the mysterious disappearance of a young campaign worker in the community which resembles that of two earlier unsolved murders, and the trial of the grandson of one of PV ‘s most prestigious founders.
I’m going to read more books by Attica Locke (who is also a writer and producer for TV’s Empire series) and recommend this one though I would start,as I wish I had, with book one Back Water Rising.
4 stars - read for On The Southern Literary Trail - Jan selection
Unfortunately I read (bookclub selection) this one which is the second book first. Most likely because of that the first part seemed to take a long time getting things set straight. However by the middle of this story about Jay Porter, a returning lawyer struggling with the recent loss of his wife, working on a slowly plodding environmental case for many of adverse effected residents of Pleasantville a strong black suburb of Houston, Texas, really takes off.
Jay’s life and that of his 2 children become endangered when the environmental case runs headlong into ongoing Mayoral politics, the mysterious disappearance of a young campaign worker in the community which resembles that of two earlier unsolved murders, and the trial of the grandson of one of PV ‘s most prestigious founders.
I’m going to read more books by Attica Locke (who is also a writer and producer for TV’s Empire series) and recommend this one though I would start,as I wish I had, with book one Back Water Rising.
4 stars - read for On The Southern Literary Trail - Jan selection
February 16, 2023
This is the fourth book I’ve read by Attica Locke, and I gave the other three 4. She’s so completely good at writing murder mysteries that encompass many themes and subjects. She’s also really good with characters. In this book, she’s downright exceptional.
In Pleasantville, the second book in the Jay Porter series, we find Jay Porter losing momentum in his law practice. He is a Black man, recently widowed, and doing his best to raise his two kids in Houston, Texas. In the midst of a tense mayoral campaign, he reluctantly accepts a job representing a nephew and campaign manager of one of the candidates in a murder trial, despite being an environmental lawyer. Three young women have been abducted from the neighborhood of Pleasantville, raped, and murdered, and their deaths are going to be used as a political tool.
Locke deftly weaves politics, greed, racism, murder, corruption, sexism, and environmental damage into the setting that is 1996 Houston, Texas. It is a prophetic book and it is an emotional book. There are moments, like when Jay Porter speaks to one of the murdered girl’s mothers that took my breath away. Such moments are just part of what keep me coming back to read Attica Locke’s books.
In Pleasantville, the second book in the Jay Porter series, we find Jay Porter losing momentum in his law practice. He is a Black man, recently widowed, and doing his best to raise his two kids in Houston, Texas. In the midst of a tense mayoral campaign, he reluctantly accepts a job representing a nephew and campaign manager of one of the candidates in a murder trial, despite being an environmental lawyer. Three young women have been abducted from the neighborhood of Pleasantville, raped, and murdered, and their deaths are going to be used as a political tool.
Locke deftly weaves politics, greed, racism, murder, corruption, sexism, and environmental damage into the setting that is 1996 Houston, Texas. It is a prophetic book and it is an emotional book. There are moments, like when Jay Porter speaks to one of the murdered girl’s mothers that took my breath away. Such moments are just part of what keep me coming back to read Attica Locke’s books.
May 19, 2015
Originally published at
Pleasantville was every bit as terrific as I expected it to be, and the story makes an excellent bookend to Jay Porter’s legal career. We saw it take off in and in Pleasantville we see what could be his swan song, or perhaps a new renaissance. Time will tell.
Jay’s own story seems to be a parable on the cliche that if it wasn’t for bad luck, he wouldn’t have any at all. He has an unfortunate knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and nearly getting himself killed extricating himself from the mess that he has accidentally landed in.
In this particular story, Jay also finds himself caught in the middle of a mess that could be described as “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely�, along with a cautionary tale about not getting in the way of someone who gets their jollies by being a very big fish in a very small pond.
I used to know someone who referred to some folks who fit that category as being a shark in a goldfish bowl. The problem that Jay discovers is that those type of sharks will do just about anything to maintain their sharkitude.
Pleasantville takes place in 1996, fifteen years after the end of Black Water Rising. During those intervening years, Jay’s career has risen and finally fallen. He’s gone from being in his 30s to pushing 50, and sometimes feeling 50 push back. In Black Water Rising, his wife Bernice was pregnant with their first child. In Pleasantville, he is a widower raising their two children alone, after Bernice’s death from cancer the previous year. His once burgeoning civil practice has sunk to one last case that he is afraid to go to court with � after the death of his wife, he has lost his own fire.
In the autumn of 1996 the country was about to elect Bill Clinton for his second term. In Houston, a historic mayoral race has come down to a runoff between the first black Houston police chief and the second woman to run a viable campaign for mayor. The politics are dirty and getting dirtier by the minute.
In the middle of the campaign, a young female campaign worker is murdered, and the pattern of the crime fits two other recent murders of young women in the Pleasantville neighborhood. The murder is tragic, but political considerations overtake the investigation of the crime.
Former police chief Axel Hathorne is from Pleasantville. His opponent, District Attorney Wollcott, decides to prosecute Axe’s nephew Neal for the crime, based on extremely flimsy evidence. As Neal is his uncle’s campaign manager, it looks a lot like a cheap stunt to tank Axe in the upcoming runoff election.
Jay takes Neal’s case. At first, simply because he is in the police station when Neal is brought in for questioning. A happenstance. The patriarch of the Hathorne family, Sam Hathorne, asks Jay to take the case for real when Neal is charged. Jay doesn’t trust Sam, doesn’t trust himself in a courtroom, but can’t manage to stop himself from taking up Neal’s case when it looks like he wasn’t just falsely accused, but falsely accused in order to finagle the outcome of the election.
But the case turns out to be much different than Jay imagined. Not because of the election angle, but because old Sam Hathorne, the unofficial mayor of Pleasantville, has committed many more and dirtier deals than anyone in his community imagined. He’s sacrificed everyone’s best interests in order to maintain his position as the shark in his particular goldfish bowl.
And Jay won’t let him get away with it any more than he’ll let the DA and her dirty tricks manager get away with pursuing a trumped up murder charge to steal an election.
Escape Rating A+: Pleasantville was even better than Black Water Rising. The story has just as many thrills and definitely chills, but the scope was larger and the chills further reaching. While Black Water Rising was about one man’s fight against corporate corruption, Pleasantville has a broader theme about the far reaching consequences of political corruption, and the short term memories of the electorate. It’s a story about the changing nature of one community, and how that change is reflected in the wider world.
The dirty tricks campaign against Alex Hathorne in Houston is intended as a precursor of the long-drawn-out fight that turned into the 2000 presidential election where our fate was decided in a courtroom. The manager of the dirty tricks in this Houston mayoral race moves on to bigger and better (or worse, depending on perspective) things as a manager of the Bush campaign in 2000. It’s easy to see a connection between this mayoral campaign and the Swift Boat deceptive advertising in the 2004 election.
But this story personalizes the political dirt by focusing on the bogus case against Neal Hathorne. Through the case of one young man who has an alibi for the time when the crime took place, we see how easy it is to obfuscate the facts in order to forward an agenda. The opponents didn’t need to convict him, they just needed to dirty his name for 30 days, long enough to win the election. That Jay is willing to do whatever it takes to thwart that ambition tells both him and the reader that he still has something left to live for, and still has something to give back to his community and his clients.
That he is unwilling to bury a difficult truth in order to keep the status quo in power shows that he is still an idealist after all. And those choices are what make him so fascinating to follow.
Pleasantville was every bit as terrific as I expected it to be, and the story makes an excellent bookend to Jay Porter’s legal career. We saw it take off in and in Pleasantville we see what could be his swan song, or perhaps a new renaissance. Time will tell.
Jay’s own story seems to be a parable on the cliche that if it wasn’t for bad luck, he wouldn’t have any at all. He has an unfortunate knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, and nearly getting himself killed extricating himself from the mess that he has accidentally landed in.
In this particular story, Jay also finds himself caught in the middle of a mess that could be described as “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely�, along with a cautionary tale about not getting in the way of someone who gets their jollies by being a very big fish in a very small pond.
I used to know someone who referred to some folks who fit that category as being a shark in a goldfish bowl. The problem that Jay discovers is that those type of sharks will do just about anything to maintain their sharkitude.
Pleasantville takes place in 1996, fifteen years after the end of Black Water Rising. During those intervening years, Jay’s career has risen and finally fallen. He’s gone from being in his 30s to pushing 50, and sometimes feeling 50 push back. In Black Water Rising, his wife Bernice was pregnant with their first child. In Pleasantville, he is a widower raising their two children alone, after Bernice’s death from cancer the previous year. His once burgeoning civil practice has sunk to one last case that he is afraid to go to court with � after the death of his wife, he has lost his own fire.
In the autumn of 1996 the country was about to elect Bill Clinton for his second term. In Houston, a historic mayoral race has come down to a runoff between the first black Houston police chief and the second woman to run a viable campaign for mayor. The politics are dirty and getting dirtier by the minute.
In the middle of the campaign, a young female campaign worker is murdered, and the pattern of the crime fits two other recent murders of young women in the Pleasantville neighborhood. The murder is tragic, but political considerations overtake the investigation of the crime.
Former police chief Axel Hathorne is from Pleasantville. His opponent, District Attorney Wollcott, decides to prosecute Axe’s nephew Neal for the crime, based on extremely flimsy evidence. As Neal is his uncle’s campaign manager, it looks a lot like a cheap stunt to tank Axe in the upcoming runoff election.
Jay takes Neal’s case. At first, simply because he is in the police station when Neal is brought in for questioning. A happenstance. The patriarch of the Hathorne family, Sam Hathorne, asks Jay to take the case for real when Neal is charged. Jay doesn’t trust Sam, doesn’t trust himself in a courtroom, but can’t manage to stop himself from taking up Neal’s case when it looks like he wasn’t just falsely accused, but falsely accused in order to finagle the outcome of the election.
But the case turns out to be much different than Jay imagined. Not because of the election angle, but because old Sam Hathorne, the unofficial mayor of Pleasantville, has committed many more and dirtier deals than anyone in his community imagined. He’s sacrificed everyone’s best interests in order to maintain his position as the shark in his particular goldfish bowl.
And Jay won’t let him get away with it any more than he’ll let the DA and her dirty tricks manager get away with pursuing a trumped up murder charge to steal an election.
Escape Rating A+: Pleasantville was even better than Black Water Rising. The story has just as many thrills and definitely chills, but the scope was larger and the chills further reaching. While Black Water Rising was about one man’s fight against corporate corruption, Pleasantville has a broader theme about the far reaching consequences of political corruption, and the short term memories of the electorate. It’s a story about the changing nature of one community, and how that change is reflected in the wider world.
The dirty tricks campaign against Alex Hathorne in Houston is intended as a precursor of the long-drawn-out fight that turned into the 2000 presidential election where our fate was decided in a courtroom. The manager of the dirty tricks in this Houston mayoral race moves on to bigger and better (or worse, depending on perspective) things as a manager of the Bush campaign in 2000. It’s easy to see a connection between this mayoral campaign and the Swift Boat deceptive advertising in the 2004 election.
But this story personalizes the political dirt by focusing on the bogus case against Neal Hathorne. Through the case of one young man who has an alibi for the time when the crime took place, we see how easy it is to obfuscate the facts in order to forward an agenda. The opponents didn’t need to convict him, they just needed to dirty his name for 30 days, long enough to win the election. That Jay is willing to do whatever it takes to thwart that ambition tells both him and the reader that he still has something left to live for, and still has something to give back to his community and his clients.
That he is unwilling to bury a difficult truth in order to keep the status quo in power shows that he is still an idealist after all. And those choices are what make him so fascinating to follow.
August 13, 2020
I read Black Water Rising, Attica Locke's first novel, earlier this year and I was eager to read this one which is a sequel. I decided not to deprive myself of that pleasure any longer.
Pleasantville, which takes its name from a Houston suburb built expressly for upwardly mobile Black people, is set fifteen years after the events of the first book. It is 1996 and much has happened in those intervening years. One notable event that has some relationship to the plot of this book was the closing of the venerable Houston Post in April 1994. The money-grubbing, non-journalist owner decided to shut down with no warning to the employees. (If I sound bitter, it is only because I am.) So, by 1996, the Houston Chronicle is the only daily newspaper.
Much has happened in attorney Jay Porter's life as well. He has become more widely known and successful after his victory in the Cole Oil case that the previous book recounted. But his personal life is in shambles after his beloved wife died of cancer the year before. He is left to raise a teenage daughter and his younger son on his own and he doubts he is up to the challenge. In response, he has virtually given up his practice in the interim. He presently has one case pending; he is representing the community of Pleasantville in its suit regarding a chemical fire that caused severe damage. But the case seems to be going nowhere and some of his clients are beginning to question his dedication to it.
In 1996, Houston is in the midst of a mayoral campaign that pits a Black former police chief against a woman district attorney. (Like her first book which detailed the election of the first woman mayor of Houston, parts of this book are loosely based on the election of its first Black mayor, Lee Brown.) The campaign threatens to get nasty as one side employs the dirty tricks playbook, but then an unexpected event scrambles everything. A young woman disappears from a street corner in Pleasantville. She had apparently been distributing flyers for one of the campaigns. A few days later, her brutalized body is found near the railroad tracks.
The murder recalls the earlier disappearance and murder of two girls from Pleasantville. Those murders were never solved. Although the circumstances of the new murder are somewhat different, Jay Porter and his friend, who had been a reporter for the Houston Post and had covered the other murders, suspect that all three are related. But how to prove that, especially when the police seem to be dragging their feet and the Houston Chronicle barely mentions the murder? When the investigative reporter from the Post had left the building on that final day of the newspaper, she had managed to take a box of her notes with her. Among those notes are her interviews and findings regarding the two earlier murders. That provides a starting point for trying to find out what happened this time.
Jay feels bound to Pleasantville because so many of the residents are his clients and he knows the family of the girl who was killed. Then the nephew of one of the mayoral candidates (the former police chief) who was deeply involved in the campaign is arrested for the murder and the whole thing begins to smell like a political hit job. The family wants Jay to defend the young man. He feels an obligation to look into the matter and he and his team of a private investigator, the former reporter, and his office assistant get to work to try to find a way of proving their client didn't do this heinous crime.
It's fun to watch as the team goes about connecting loose ends and pulling the story together. Early on, I identified a suspect and I waited for the investigators to come to the same conclusion I had. In the end, it turned out I had been right all along! Very satisfying.
Attica Locke is an excellent writer who obviously knows Houston very well. Her explication of the political chicanery and the legal scheming and planning that goes on behind the scenes just adds another layer to an already intricate plot. That being said, I found the plot not at all difficult to follow. Locke is swiftly becoming one of my favorite writers of thrillers.
Pleasantville, which takes its name from a Houston suburb built expressly for upwardly mobile Black people, is set fifteen years after the events of the first book. It is 1996 and much has happened in those intervening years. One notable event that has some relationship to the plot of this book was the closing of the venerable Houston Post in April 1994. The money-grubbing, non-journalist owner decided to shut down with no warning to the employees. (If I sound bitter, it is only because I am.) So, by 1996, the Houston Chronicle is the only daily newspaper.
Much has happened in attorney Jay Porter's life as well. He has become more widely known and successful after his victory in the Cole Oil case that the previous book recounted. But his personal life is in shambles after his beloved wife died of cancer the year before. He is left to raise a teenage daughter and his younger son on his own and he doubts he is up to the challenge. In response, he has virtually given up his practice in the interim. He presently has one case pending; he is representing the community of Pleasantville in its suit regarding a chemical fire that caused severe damage. But the case seems to be going nowhere and some of his clients are beginning to question his dedication to it.
In 1996, Houston is in the midst of a mayoral campaign that pits a Black former police chief against a woman district attorney. (Like her first book which detailed the election of the first woman mayor of Houston, parts of this book are loosely based on the election of its first Black mayor, Lee Brown.) The campaign threatens to get nasty as one side employs the dirty tricks playbook, but then an unexpected event scrambles everything. A young woman disappears from a street corner in Pleasantville. She had apparently been distributing flyers for one of the campaigns. A few days later, her brutalized body is found near the railroad tracks.
The murder recalls the earlier disappearance and murder of two girls from Pleasantville. Those murders were never solved. Although the circumstances of the new murder are somewhat different, Jay Porter and his friend, who had been a reporter for the Houston Post and had covered the other murders, suspect that all three are related. But how to prove that, especially when the police seem to be dragging their feet and the Houston Chronicle barely mentions the murder? When the investigative reporter from the Post had left the building on that final day of the newspaper, she had managed to take a box of her notes with her. Among those notes are her interviews and findings regarding the two earlier murders. That provides a starting point for trying to find out what happened this time.
Jay feels bound to Pleasantville because so many of the residents are his clients and he knows the family of the girl who was killed. Then the nephew of one of the mayoral candidates (the former police chief) who was deeply involved in the campaign is arrested for the murder and the whole thing begins to smell like a political hit job. The family wants Jay to defend the young man. He feels an obligation to look into the matter and he and his team of a private investigator, the former reporter, and his office assistant get to work to try to find a way of proving their client didn't do this heinous crime.
It's fun to watch as the team goes about connecting loose ends and pulling the story together. Early on, I identified a suspect and I waited for the investigators to come to the same conclusion I had. In the end, it turned out I had been right all along! Very satisfying.
Attica Locke is an excellent writer who obviously knows Houston very well. Her explication of the political chicanery and the legal scheming and planning that goes on behind the scenes just adds another layer to an already intricate plot. That being said, I found the plot not at all difficult to follow. Locke is swiftly becoming one of my favorite writers of thrillers.
June 9, 2015
What’s fascinating about Pleasantville, Attica Locke’s latest thriller involving her series character, attorney Jay Porter, is that while it’s set in Houston in 1996, and the reader knows the history to come, we are dropped into the setting as if we did not. A suspenseful fictional ride ensues with the theme of post civil-rights era African-American history as a backdrop. References to George W. Bush’s upcoming presidential bid, ruthless electoral strategizing, and foreshadowing of the Enron scandal are sprinkled through the story giving it a feel of authenticity regarding locale and time.
When the story opens, the Houston mayoral race has come down to a run-off between Axel Hathorne, an African-American former police chief, and Sandy Wolcott, a white female district attorney. Hathorne’s biggest asset is Pleasantville, electoral district 259, a black community formed in the 1950s and organized into a power bloc. This minority electorate has the power to swing close elections, making it both a well-respected and targeted district by both black and white politicians.
Candidate Hathorne has a particular advantage in Pleasantville, as his father was one of the founders. However, when a young woman is murdered, last seen wearing a Hathorne campaign t-shirt on election night, the candidate’s run-off campaign suffers. When a Hathorne aide is accused of the murder, attorney Jay Porter steps in to fight the DA who is prosecuting the case which casts doubt on her own mayoral rival. Porter asserts his inexperience to handle a death-penalty case, his ongoing grief at the loss of his wife, and his dwindling bank account. However, he is so outraged by the suspicious indictment and potential corruption that he takes the case and begins his march toward justice by casting light into the darker side of power.
The dense plotting and numerous characters complicate the story in a way that can confuse the reader unless careful attention is paid. In addition to the young woman’s death, Locke weaves in many Pleasantville residents, two previous unsolved murders, and a corporate pollution suit that Porter is pursuing. Blues music is threaded throughout the story, adding another dimension that becomes more important as the plot evolves. All this occurs while Porter is repeatedly assaulted as a warning to drop the case.
The novel climaxes in a trial that satisfies the pickiest readers, and revelation of the murderer that surprises even the savviest “whodunit� fans. Pleasantville keeps the reader turning the pages, thinking, and guessing until the very end.
Manning Wolfe is an author and attorney residing in Austin, Texas. After many years of storytelling, Manning has begun a legal thriller series involving a Texas attorney based in Austin. The first in the series, Dollar Signs: Texas Lady Lawyer vs. Boots King was the winner of the 2014 Writer’s League of Texas Manuscript Contest. A graduate of Rice University and the University of Texas School of Law, she specializes in business law. Visit her website .
When the story opens, the Houston mayoral race has come down to a run-off between Axel Hathorne, an African-American former police chief, and Sandy Wolcott, a white female district attorney. Hathorne’s biggest asset is Pleasantville, electoral district 259, a black community formed in the 1950s and organized into a power bloc. This minority electorate has the power to swing close elections, making it both a well-respected and targeted district by both black and white politicians.
Candidate Hathorne has a particular advantage in Pleasantville, as his father was one of the founders. However, when a young woman is murdered, last seen wearing a Hathorne campaign t-shirt on election night, the candidate’s run-off campaign suffers. When a Hathorne aide is accused of the murder, attorney Jay Porter steps in to fight the DA who is prosecuting the case which casts doubt on her own mayoral rival. Porter asserts his inexperience to handle a death-penalty case, his ongoing grief at the loss of his wife, and his dwindling bank account. However, he is so outraged by the suspicious indictment and potential corruption that he takes the case and begins his march toward justice by casting light into the darker side of power.
The dense plotting and numerous characters complicate the story in a way that can confuse the reader unless careful attention is paid. In addition to the young woman’s death, Locke weaves in many Pleasantville residents, two previous unsolved murders, and a corporate pollution suit that Porter is pursuing. Blues music is threaded throughout the story, adding another dimension that becomes more important as the plot evolves. All this occurs while Porter is repeatedly assaulted as a warning to drop the case.
The novel climaxes in a trial that satisfies the pickiest readers, and revelation of the murderer that surprises even the savviest “whodunit� fans. Pleasantville keeps the reader turning the pages, thinking, and guessing until the very end.
Manning Wolfe is an author and attorney residing in Austin, Texas. After many years of storytelling, Manning has begun a legal thriller series involving a Texas attorney based in Austin. The first in the series, Dollar Signs: Texas Lady Lawyer vs. Boots King was the winner of the 2014 Writer’s League of Texas Manuscript Contest. A graduate of Rice University and the University of Texas School of Law, she specializes in business law. Visit her website .
December 25, 2019
Pleasingly solid read covering political shenanigans in Houston with an intelligent side dose of social history. Good.
May 19, 2015
My USA Today review:
***½ out of four
My early reviewer's edition of Pleasantville casually mentions that Attica Locke is "a writer and co-producer on the upcoming Fox drama Empire." Well, it arrived, and now Locke is presumably on a private island sipping champagne and contemplating the hit show's next season � which makes this a melancholy review to write, because the book is splendid, and now who knows when another might come along? It's Locke's second featuring Jay Porter, a smart, lonely and decent lawyer in 1990s Houston. Pleasantville, his predominantly black neighborhood, has a missing teenage girl, the third such disappearance; a mayoral runoff complicates the search for her. What ensues is a thoughtful, penetrating mystery. In vision, if not in tone, Locke is another Louise Penny, taking a small community and showing through a crime how its politics and enmities and debts are related.
***½ out of four
My early reviewer's edition of Pleasantville casually mentions that Attica Locke is "a writer and co-producer on the upcoming Fox drama Empire." Well, it arrived, and now Locke is presumably on a private island sipping champagne and contemplating the hit show's next season � which makes this a melancholy review to write, because the book is splendid, and now who knows when another might come along? It's Locke's second featuring Jay Porter, a smart, lonely and decent lawyer in 1990s Houston. Pleasantville, his predominantly black neighborhood, has a missing teenage girl, the third such disappearance; a mayoral runoff complicates the search for her. What ensues is a thoughtful, penetrating mystery. In vision, if not in tone, Locke is another Louise Penny, taking a small community and showing through a crime how its politics and enmities and debts are related.
July 29, 2016
Jay Porter has a new office, a different house, 2 children and a string of clients that are tired of waiting for the settlement from Cole Oil he was fighting to win in Black Water Rising. In the middle of a mayoral election that will become its own character as Locke's novel continues, a young girl goes missing on a street corner on page one. I had no intention of reading 2 books in 24 hours, but one of Locke's many gifts is to grab you by your reading brain straightaway. Jay is tired. His clients are tired. Eddie Mae is tired. Somebody has broken into his office. Police respond to his call and find nothing. Jay gets a broom to sweep up. The only glass is on the porch. The window was broken from the inside. This book was published in 2015, is set in 1996, and if the murders don't grab your attention, the wicked politics will.
August 28, 2017
I was very happy with this ending. I thought this second installment was done very well. At first it starts off pretty slow, but after the 150 page mark it all goes great from there! I read the second 1/2 of the book in one day. Book 2 in the Jay Porter series starts off and centers around a group of girls who have been taken and killed and all the while the race for mayor in Pleasantville is one the way and when one of the candidates' team mates is accused of being the killer, Jay is placed in a position where he has to step in and help. Not only is this person rep on the line, but Jay's livelihood is also at stake. While for me this was a slow starter once it got going it really got good and I finished it in a days time. It has family secrets, political intrigue, courtroom drama, underhanded attorneys everything that I look for in a lawyer book.
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