Thursday, June 13, 2013

Dead Center by Joanna Higgins (review)


Dead Center 



Dead Center
By JoAnna Higgins

Genre: Mystery, Suspense
 Published Jan 2010
Pages: 272
Publisher:Permanent Press
Buy it or View on Goodreads  




Summary:  "Twenty years after a shooting death deemed accidental, a respected pediatrician is charged with murdering a man who had been his friend. In those intervening years, the pediatrician, Dr. Benjamin Weber, has married his friend's widow and adopted their two children. And during those years, he has proven himself to be a devoted father and spouse as well as a trusted physician.
 
Dr. Weber pleads innocent, and his wife believes him. His grown daughters Laura and Lin believe him. Or do they?


As the novel evolves, the mystery at its center deepens into an exploration of divided loyalties and precarious family relationships, of children's need to believe in conflict with their desire for truth.
This suspenseful novel combines elements of the conventional murder mystery and courtroom drama, but goes beyond these into that greater drama of the human heart in conflict with itself.

Inspired by an actual case, Dead Center is really an ancient story in contemporary guise, one wherein betrayal blurs with love, evil with good, hatred with forgiveness, and guilt with innocence. It is also the story of a family that has been wrenched apart by loss for a second time but not, finally, destroyed."


Review:  This book is about a father, named Ben, who is being charged with a murder. This "murder" took place 20 years ago and was declared a hunting accident. The book is primarily told from the perspective of his two eldest daughters, Laura and Linda. Actually, they are his stepdaughters. They are, in fact, the daughters of the man is is being accused of murdering...

An interesting premise for a story based on that. However this book has too many other focus'. Stray and random thoughts and images. A lot of the book read more like a journal. The book is written much like what I might expect from a true crime courtroom setting book.

 At first I held a lot of hope.  Around halfway through the book, my interest started to drop. The story wasn't moving along. Hints of other situations, gabs in the trial, drug rings and more are mentioned but don't seem well placed or explained. This book has a lot of internal and family drama to it as well, which at times raised my interest, and others (depending how it was written) did not.

I received a free copy of this book from the Goodreads giveaway program.



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