A Death in Live Oak: A Jack Swytek Novel - James Grippando

Written by James Grippando
Read by Jonathan Davis
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 64 Kbps
Unabridged

Series: Jack Swytek, book 14
Publisher: HarperCollins
Release date: February 6, 2018
Duration: 12:06:39

From the 2017 winner of the Harper Lee Prize for legal fiction comes a powerful and timely story of race, politics, injustice, and murder as shocking and incendiary as today’s headlines. Defense attorney Jack Swyteck defends a white college student charged in Florida’s first racial terror lynching in more than a half century.

When the body of Jamal Cousin, president of the pre-eminent black fraternity at the University of Florida, is discovered hogtied in the Stygian water swamps of the Suwanee River Valley, the death sets off a firestorm that threatens to rage out of control when a fellow student, Mark Towson, the president of a prominent white fraternity, is accused of the crime.

Contending with rising political tensions, racial unrest, and a sensational media, Towson’s defense attorney, Jack Swyteck, knows that the stakes could not be higher—inside or outside the old Suwanee County Courthouse. The evidence against his client seems overwhelming. Then Jack gets a break that could turn the case. Jamal’s murder bears disturbing similarities to another lynching that occurred back in the Jim Crow days of 1944. Are the chilling parallels purely coincidental?

With each twist and turn, Jack is convinced that his client may be the victim of something even more sinister than the case presented by the state attorney. For Jack, it’s about the truth. And he’s determined to find it, no matter what the cost.

Reviews - Grippando skims over this timely topic, providing no insights, for example, into how the community will deal with the racial fallout, but those looking for a legal thriller heavy on action will be rewarded.

Tackling racism, white supremacists, and a generations-old lynching, the book is admirably heartfelt and humane. But the forces of evil are cartoons, the subplot feels tacked on, and the conclusion is unsatisfying on every level.