This is the second novel in the volume “The Jailhouse Lawyer” which I said I’d get to a week or so ago.  So I got to it but didn’t finish until the wee hours of August 1.  

Power of Attorney 
By James. Patterson and Nancy Allen
2021 / 
Read by Megan Tusing 7h 47m 
Rating: B+  / mystery – crime

The premise here is interesting – a cognitively challenged youngish woman has run away from the farm where she lived with her older cousins since she was 10 years old. That was when her mother died.  Amber was sleeping in a shed when she woke to find the farmhouse with her cousins in it engulfed in flames. She was caught and charged with arson and murder because it was thought she had set the fire and was hiding.

Meanwhile, Leah Randall, an attorney from Chicago, is visiting her parents in their small Arkansas town. She’s there to check on her father, an old respected lawyer,  who now has dementia and whose practice is in a mess.  While she’s there her mother offers Leah’s services in a case which turns out to be the one described above.

It’s a tough case and it’s a tough read. There’s a lot of gritty talk and violence. This is what I think of when I think of James Patterson writing. I did read a book he wrote solo a long time ago and it was a bit much – too gritty for me. Only when he got with Maxine Praeto did I enjoy him.  (And I’ve changed some, too but then, so has pop literature.)

The plot here is great.  And now I feel like getting a good clean maybe cozy murder mystery.  LOL!