Oh I did need something a bit lighter after  Bob Woodward’s Fear – (see my review).   This was highly recommended by a reader I follow at Audible and it is well worth it (I do enjoy a good legal crime novel.)  Be aware this is not a thriller nor much of a courtroom drama.  it’s simply a thought provoking legal crime story,  a good one.

The voice of the basic 3rd person narrator here might be a bit dry if it weren’t read by George Newbern who almost breathes a whole character into it and it works wonderfully well.   I’m going to have to look out for him.

*******
Flat Lake in Winter
by Joseph T.  Klempner
2016/  (320 pages) 
read by George Newbern
rating:  A / legal crime
*******

Jonathan Hamilton is a 28-year old man who lives with his elderly grandparents because he is mentally challenged and his own parents are deceased.  They live in an old mansion on the shores of Flat Lake in upstate New York.  The book opens with him finding them dead,  brutally knifed.  He’s then arrested and the case follows the investigation and trial.  It’s fiction but written almost as though it were true crime.

Matt Fielder is called in to defend Jonathan in what is almost guaranteed to be a death penalty outcome.  Fielder is all but convinced that Jonathan did it.  But what motive could the limited Jonathan have not really understanding more than what happens on any given day?

And as he looks into Jonathan’s background,  his schooling and family, there is a real twists what with a seriously dysfunctional family and their doings but there are more twists after that.

Matt is a bit of a character, too,  likable enough,  but with his own troubles including booze and women.  I found some of his antics rather humorous.

Of possible interest:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicidal_sleepwalking

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