A dream in the dark A novel

Justice's second legal thriller featuring Denver attorney Liza Brown (after They Can't Take Your Name) is a step down from its predecessor. Liza has worked closely with Project Joseph to help exonerate people who've been wrongly convicted of violent crimes ever since her father was executed for a mass murder he didn't commit. In 1992, Moses King, a prisoner who claims he knew Liza's father, reaches out to the organization. He's been convicted of assaulting and blinding a woman named Claudette Cooper, who testified that, while she didn't see her assailant's face, she dreamed it was King. Despite the case not meeting Project Joseph's typical criteria--King is not on death row, nor is he facing a life sentence--Liza believes in his innocence and agrees to represent him. She loops in her friend and former colleague Eli Stone, and together, they inch closer to the truth while Liza's superiors try to pull her attention toward cases that better suit Project Joseph's mission. Meanwhile, Denver erupts into protests over racial discrimination by police. Clumsy prose ("Her tears fell with the ease of a spring thunderstorm upon her cheeks") and thin characterizations keep this from taking flight. It's a disappointment. Agent: Andrew D. Wolgemuth, Wolgemuth & Assoc. (July)

The efforts of a Black rookie attorney to exonerate Denver's wrongly imprisoned continues. Talk about steady work. Whipped into even more righteous fury by her failure to clear her father before his execution, Liza Brown has joined Project Joseph in order to reopen the cases of strangers. She's slated to look into the conviction of Dexter Diaz, who's currently serving a life sentence for killing special education teacher Kathy McCarver, when she gets a letter from Moses King, who's already 28 years into a 48-year sentence for attacking Claudette Cooper, begging her to take his case because an old buddy of his has confessed to the assault. Her boss orders Liza to decline, since Moses isn't on death row or even serving a life sentence. But Dexter is so unsympathetic and Moses so appealing that Liza keeps looking for ways to color outside the lines. As she searches for more evidence that might vindicate Moses, who was convicted on the basis of a dream Claudette had about him a day and a half after the crime, Liza's friend Eli Stone fights to keep The Roz, the jazz club he restored in the Five Points neighborhood, open despite declining revenues, competition from newcomer Chance's Place, and his own alcohol-fueled torment over the death of his wife five years ago. The story, drawing on a surprising number of real-life cases and people, is less impressive as a mystery or a legal thriller than as a fictionalized history of Black citizens' struggles to extract justice from a legal system determined to crush them and spit them out. A bruising, blow-by-blow account of what can happen to dreams deferred. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.