Saralee Says
Discovering a mystery writer who writes a great series is like being told by your doctor that chocolate is as good for you as spinach. Suspicion of Vengeance (Penguin) is a continuation of Barbara Parker’s mystery series that feature Gail Connor and Anthony Quintana. If you enjoy reading a good who-done-it book that has the same main characters from book to book, then curl up with one of Parker’s books.
Parker knows what she is writing about because she used to work as a prosecutor in Dade County, Fl. There is nothing like someone with real life experience in one of the wackiest parts of the United States to blend the truth about Miami with the fiction of a good suspense novel. Parker’s story is not about the haves versus the have-nots of society. Instead, it is about the wealthy versus the wealthier that I think makes for great escapism while reading. It is like visiting the most glamorous part of Miami without ever leaving your home in Tennessee.
Gail Connor is a WASP from a prominent Miami family. Parker has used her legal background to create the character of Connor who was also a former prosecutor in Miami. She, like her lover Anthony Quintana, is an attorney. There the similarities end. While Connor represents old Miami money, Anthony moved to Florida from Cuba as a child and worked hard to earn his way to the top ranks of Florida’s criminal defense lawyers. Together, they would be smart enough to solve the mysteries and shenanigans of Enron and WorldCom.
Gail and Anthony have fallen in love and whether they want to or not, team up together to solve murder cases. Suspicion of Vengeance is about the last minute effort by Gail to save a family friend from execution for a murder that Gail believes he did not commit.
Do you agree that Barbara Parker is as good a mystery writer as nationally recognized authors like Sue Grafton, James Patterson, James Lee Burke or Nashvillians Cecelia Tishy, Sallie Bissell and Steven Womack? If you have read all of these authors, how would you rank Parker? What are your feelings about the death penalty and did your opinion about capital punishment influence the way that you viewed the final outcome? Did Parker take the easy way out with a difficult crime and did she keep you guessing until the last minute about whom was really guilty?
What about the relationship between two strong career people? Do you think their arguments are realistic or did you become impatient with Gail and Anthony? I confess the give and take between these two characters is what makes me keep reading her books. I enjoy their fiery relationship as much as I do the real murder plots that Parker so brilliantly writes.
Larry’s Language
In the real world, the death penalty is different. I should know because I have been a lawyer in more than a dozen death penalty cases. They involve the most atrocious crimes of first-degree murder and irreversible punishment for the defendant who is convicted. When our criminal justice system makes mistakes about guilt and innocence (about five percent of the time) there is no taking back the death penalty.
So lawyers tend to work harder, pay more attention, and lose more sleep at night in these cases. Now in the latest criminal thriller by Barbara Parker, Suspicion of Vengeance, an old friend of the family has persuaded Florida attorney Gail Connor to review the 12-year-old case of a death row inmate who is scheduled to be executed soon. Anthony Quintana is Connor’s boyfriend or fiancée or significant other or something. From book to book in this series his status changes depending on how condescending or understanding he is and recently Gail Connor threw his engagement ring in a Florida canal.
So this book has it all—romance with sparks, murder and the tension of whether the condemned man Kenny Ray Clark is guilty or innocent and will live or die. There are more than a few problems for Connor since she is a one-lawyer office primarily practices civil law rather than criminal law and the crime itself is twelve years old. Her investigation shows that the death row inmate’s original attorney failed to investigate a crooked land deal and failed to investigate the adulterous affair, either of which could have been the motive for a different killer.
No surprise here since just like in real life many attorneys appointed to represent defendants in death row cases are at the bottom rung of the professional practice. Author Parker, a former prosecutor herself, draws upon real life to make the original defense attorney a drunk who did not care.
Serious discussion questions are appropriate. How much confidence should we have in the accuracy and legal integrity of jury decisions in the death penalty cases? What kind of resources should the courts devote to a defense for a person accused of taking a human beings life with violence under horrible circumstances? How many times and for how long should the courts review a jury’s decision about a death penalty case? How should we have reacted when we saw federal courts last year approve the performance of defense lawyers who literally slept through and during death penalty trials? Why do many courts routinely appoint inexperienced and incompetent defense attorneys to handle death penalty cases? The result in the real world is that the appeals courts reverse the jury decision in half to two thirds of all death penalty cases.
But you will have to read Parker’s book to discover whether this is one of those cases. Parker’s books are a delight to read.
Join us for our next discussion, which is A Painted House by John Grisham.
