Sleight of Hand

December 24, 2012
Bestseller Margolin’s stylish if shallow fourth suspense novel featuring Washington, D.C., PI Dana Cutler (after 2012’s Capitol Murder) pits her against a particularly slimy and dangerous villain. Dispatched by client Margot Laurent to the Pacific Northwest in search of a golden scepter that once belonged to an Ottoman sultan, Cutler finds a connection between the valuable relic and Horace Blair, “the multimillionaire head of a conglomerate with tentacles in shipping, scrap metal, real estate, and other lucrative enterprises.” Back in D.C., defense lawyer Charles Benedict—magician, rapist, blackmailer, killer—is trying to frame Blair for the murder of his wife, Virginia prosecutor Carrie Blair, who disappeared shortly before termination of her prenup would have made her very rich. Cutler returns home in time to witness Blair’s bail hearing and discover a surprising link between Margot and Carrie. Cutler meets Benedict’s clever machinations with equally clever countermeasures, but readers should be prepared for superficial characterizations. Agents: Jean Naggar and Jennifer Weltz, Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency.

February 15, 2013
Washington, D.C. shamus Dana Cutler (Capitol Murder, 2012, etc.) goes up against an impossibly clever killer: an amateur magician who's also a member of the bar. The legal eagles who find Charles Benedict intelligent and charming would undoubtedly be surprised to know that he's also a stone-cold killer who doesn't flinch from liquidating the occasional thorn in the side of his associate Nikolai Orlansky, a pillar of the Russian Mafia. Fresh from his latest such favor for Orlansky, Benedict decides that it would be fun to have sex with Carrie Blair, a narcotics prosecutor who's having another quarrel with her much older husband, Horace, a wealthy businessman. So he drugs her, takes her home, drugs her again, has his way with her and then demands $250,000 for suppressing the evidence that she's violated her prenup. Alas, their negotiating session ends with Carrie's death, and now Benedict, who never planned this murder, realizes that he'll have to do some fancy footwork indeed if he's to avoid serious jail time. But great illusionists are also great improvisers, and soon enough, Benedict has not only framed Horace very convincingly for his wife's murder, but has also gotten Horace to hire him as his defense attorney. He'll get away with his crime scot-free unless Detective Frank Santoro, of the Lee County police, joins forces with Dana, back in town after a wild goose chase after the priceless and totally fictitious Ottoman Scepter, to take equally resourceful measures against him. They do, he's trapped, and then the tale is over. Margolin presents another triumph of inventive plotting over paper-thin characterization, flat prose and a wholesale departure from realism. The result is on a par with an especially good episode of Columbo.

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February 15, 2013
After criminal defense attorney Charles Benedict accidentally kills a woman in the heat of the moment (while attempting to blackmail her to the tune of $250,000), he frames the woman's husband for the murder. The victim, Carrie Blair, was a prosecutor, and her husband, Horace, is a very wealthy man, meaning that Benedict still sees a way to make some cash out of the deal. Meanwhile, private investigator Dana CutlerMargolin fans will remember her from several novels, including Capitol Murder (2012)is trying to track down a missing ancient relic, and her investigation leads her to the Blair murder case. There's a really good story hereclever defense lawyer frames man for murder, then takes the man on as his clientbut it's obscured by a lot of unnecessary material. The connection between Cutler's missing relic and the Blair case, for example, is unnecessarily complicated and massively distracting. It's as if Margolin had two stories, Benedict's and Cutler's, and rather than writing a novel about each, he decided to mash them together. As with so many of his recent novels, this one's for devoted fans only.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)

September 2, 2013
Margolin kicks off his latest thriller with a bit of literary legerdemain. He introduces Charles Benedict, a strikingly handsome and charismatic defense attorney and amateur magician who appears to be the novelâs leading man. But Benedict is swiftly exposed as an extremely effective homicidal sociopath, and the book shifts to its true protagonist, private sleuth Dana Cutler, who is quickly dispatched on a convoluted cross-country search for a bejeweled golden scepter with a history curiously similar to that of Sam Spadeâs famous Maltese Falcon. Itâs a given that this quest will eventually bring the shrewd detective in contact with the homicidal Benedict. Jonathan Davisâs narration is smooth and well paced. He adds just the right amount of smarm and smirk to Benedictâs speech and captures all of Danaâs drive, determination, and fearlessness. The bookâs other characters have more than their share of accentsâfrom the mysterious Frenchwoman who sends Dana after the scepter to a surprisingly cheery Russian mob boss. Davis ably handles these and others in a stylish performance with just an appropriate hint of sardonic amusement. A Harper hardcover.