Blood of Angels
by Reed Arvin
Published by Harper Torch
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Reviewed by Jeff Foster
(Legal thriller)
Thomas Dennehy, Assistant District Attorney of Davidson County Tennessee, has his hands full in Blood of Angels.
The case of one Wilson Owens has come back to haunt the DA's office as new evidence has come to light that the State of Tennessee may have executed the wrong man two years ago.
Dennehy was the prosecutor in the case known at the Sunshine Grocery murders and has the singular notoriety of having convicted two men in separate trials and of separate crimes of killing the same woman. This in itself puts a tornadic twist into this book that would make it a brilliant story, but Arvin goes one-step further by hurling the racially charged murder of a local white-trash girl by a Sudanese immigrant into the mix.
Kwame Jamal Hale has come forward and delivered what may prove to be very damning evidence that he, not Owens, was the murderer at the Sunshine Grocery. His claim? He knows where the heretofore-undiscovered murder weapon can be found. Dennehy, his boss David Rayburn and soon-to-be retired fellow prosecutor Carl Becker, can only wait and watch as the circus rolls into downtown Nashville and the DA's office prepares to tender their resignations en toto, if it is proved that Wilson Owens was innocent and unlawfully executed.
Meanwhile the bond hearing of the suspected Sudanese murderer Moses Bol comes to court. The DA is dealt another blow when bail is set at $1.5 million and is paid by one Fiona Towns, a Presbyterian preacher of a dying central Nashville church that has less the dozen members.
These two stories together are not enough for Arvin. He tosses in the failing personal life of Dennehy, a cast of characters that make every page a thrill to turn and just enough action for you to gnaw your fingernails down to the cuticles. Dennehy has a wit and dark sense of humor that would be depressing if it were not written so well. Add his ex-wife, her wealthy doctor second husband, and a daughter that truly loves her daddy, and you have the full package in a legal thriller that you will be proud to recommend to every fellow fiction reader you know.
Armchair Interviews says: If you love legal thrillers, check this one out!