Seeds of Doubt
Stephanie Kane
(Reviewer - Narayan Radhakrishnan)
2004 Scribner Book Co.
ISBN: 0743245571

A six year old boy is missing & Jackie Flowers defends a woman who, thirty years before, had been convicted of another murder.

Sr. Associate Reviewer Narayan Radhakrishnan writes:

Lawyer-novelist Stephanie Kane might have changed publishers, but there is no beating her, (or any compromise done) in sheer readability & nail-biting suspense.

Dyslexic, gutsy criminal lawyer, with a sharp brain & razor sharp lawyering skills, & series protagonist, Jackie Flowers returns in fine form after the fantastic Blind Spot & Extreme Indifference.

For the uninitiated Stephanie Kane reader one of her hallmarks is the authentic portrayal of courtroom action, likewise the legal action is totally rooted in reality.

Seeds of Doubt starts with a prologue set in 1973, then suddenly shifts to a courtroom where Jackie Flowers is stylishly cross-examining a witness in an “accident case”.

Six-year old Benjamin Sparks is missing & the last person in whose company he was seen was Rachel Boyd, who as a child was found guilty of murdering her friend.

Benjamin is the son of the gardener at the household of Christopher Boyd, a respected banker &, incidentally, Rachel's brother. Evidence, & by evidence I mean not bits & pieces, but a whole truckload of it, points to Rachel's guilt. But Flowers has an intuition that there is something more here than meets the eye. Even after thirty years since the earlier murder, Rachel is reluctant to say anything about it.

Flowers investigates, questions & even dons the role of a devil's advocate until she realizes that Rachel is not guilty -- of the disappearance of Benjamin, nor the murder that sent her to jail all those years before.

What follows is stunning psycho-legal suspense that rivals the best of James Patterson as in Along Came A Spider & Kiss The Girls or Richard North Patterson's legal thrillers, especially Eyes Of A Child.

Enjoyed Seeds of Doubt, highly recommended. A worthy read & a more worthy buy. More from Stephanie Kane:
Blind Spot
Extreme Indifference
(01/30/05)

Narayan
2005©Narayan Radhakrishnan
A RebeccasReads.Com Sr. Associate Reviewer

Reviewer's Bio:
I am a 26 years old lawyer practicing in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. Along with my legal practice, I have finished post-graduate studies for both Business Law & Human Rights. I am a self proclaimed numero-uno legal thriller lover & am the proud owner of all of Grisham's & Turow's novels. I enjoy John Mortimer's Rumpole & relish an occasional Martini & a rare Scot(ch)t-oline with a Patterson on the side.

My work A FICTION OF LAW is now about 500 pages in length & features 500 lawyer authors & 2000 legal thrillers covering a 300 year period - inclusive of entries from the USA, UK, Asia, Europe, China, Middle East etc. Still in search of a publisher.
www.keralatourism.org