Review by Booklist Review
In Darkness, Sing Me a Song (2018), Housewright brought private investigator Holland Taylor back after nearly 20 years. In this follow-up, a group of lawyers turn to Taylor to find the people who hacked their confidential files, and then stop them from making the files public. Taylor knows it's not an easy assignment, but he has no idea just how difficult it will be in order to find the mysterious hackers, he'll have to dig into each of the five cases whose files were hacked, and that proves to be an undertaking fraught with danger. Housewright is an accomplished crime-fiction writer: his series about PI Rushmore McKenzie is better known, but the first Taylor novel, 1995's Penance, won an Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and it's very nice to see Housewright reconnecting with the character who launched his career.--David Pitt Copyright 2019 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In Edgar winner Housewright's gripping fifth Holland Taylor mystery (after 2018's Darkness, Sing Me a Song), a coterie of Minneapolis's top lawyers whose firms' darkest secrets have been hacked hire the PI and his capable partner, Freddie Fredericks, to prevent the hacker from fulfilling a threat to post the incriminating case files online. Though the five cases initially seem unrelated ("murder, divorce, class action, bribe, and rape"), Taylor discovers that each is somehow connected to a powerful local family dominated by its ruthless patriarch, Robert Paul Guernsey. Robert's troubled stepdaughter, a young woman of about 18, proves key to the investigation. The stakes rise when witnesses begin dying. Meanwhile, savvy, empathetic Taylor and some of his attorney clients grapple with questions about the conflict between professional requirements and personal ethics. Housewright draws the Twin Cities with lovingly detailed strokes. This tightly plotted installment with its many twists will satisfy both series fans and newcomers. Agent: Alison Picard, Alison J. Picard Agency. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Minneapolis private eye Holland Taylor (Darkness, Sing Me a Song, 2018, etc.) is called on to bail out the only people in the Twin Cities more morally compromised than he is: members of the bar.David Helin was handling Brooke St. Vincent's divorce; Doug Jernigan, the defense of accused rapist Robert Garrow; Scott Mickelson, a bribery action against Mayor Mary Feeney; Cormac Puchner, a class-action suit against Standout Investments; and John Kaushal, the criminal defense of Clark Peterson, accused of killing his wife. All of them have been keeping secret online files indicating that their clients were a lot guiltier than their attorneys were willing to admit, and all of those files have been stolen by an unusually well-informed and resourceful hacker. Who took the files and leaked them to the whistleblowers of NIMN (Not in Minnesota)and why, given the very different nature of the proceedings, were these five attorneys plucked from all the ornaments of the state's bar and targeted for extortion or unmasking? That's what they pay Taylor and his partner, Freddie Fredericks, $20,000 to find out. What they don't count on is the skeletons that will come tumbling out of corporate closets in the search or the unlikely common denominator that Taylor and Freddie uncover all too soon: the wildly dysfunctional family of self-made millionaire Robert Paul Guernsey, an 80-year-old who lords it over the manse he calls Axis Mundi as his third wife, the alluring 42-year-old Maura, his offspring, and his hired minions wander the city and its environs getting into every possible kind of mischief. Taylor and Freddie need to maintain a bulletin board full of pins and thread to connect the many tentacles of the case, but readers are advised just to hang on for the ride and not to sweat the small stuff, like who killed whom and how come.An irresistible premise and a fast-moving plot carry Housewright's latest along for a miraculously extended flight before it sinks under the weight of its complications somewhere in the third act. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
