KALEIDOSCOPE

4 stars out of 5

Ask me on any given day what my favorite mystery/thriller "theme" is, and my answer will be either medical or legal. Back in a much earlier life, I was a legal secretary - and actually looked into training to be a court stenographer (this was before machine transcription took over, of course). On the medical side, authors like Patricia Cornwell and Tess Gerritsen have long been favorites; and as a journalist, I've covered health-care issues long enough to at the very least have a good handle on the terminology.

So when I got the chance to read this book - the first in a series featuring defense attorney Lucius White - despite a backlog of pre-publication review copies from NetGalley publishers languishing in my must-read stack, I simply couldn't say no. The verdict? Very good. Clearly, the author (who is a practicing attorney) has a handle on the minutiae of law as well as a clever mind capable of devising a complex, but believable, plot. It doesn't hurt that he grew up in nearby Cleveland (for an undisclosed reason, I'm totally ignoring his birth in Pittsburgh, but here's a hint: Go Browns!) 

At the start of this one, Martin Bower, CEO of Florida's Coastal Regional Hospital, is unceremoniously ejected from his position amid charges of the embezzlement of about $3 million. He turns to long-time friend Lucius for help and Lucius, not entirely convinced that Martin is innocent, agrees to take the case. For better or worse, that pits him against a federal prosecutor whose goal is getting ahead at any cost. But for her, that price may not be all that high; happily for her career, the hospital's attorneys and board members seem more than willing to provide any evidence she can use to ensure Martin's conviction.

Complicating matters is a potentially lucrative takeover of the hospital and surreptitious money transfers that may be covering up the theft of drugs. Besides that, Lucius's in-house companion Leslie, who, besides being hot to trot in the bedroom (and other parts of the house), works at an AIDS clinic that's experiencing an unexplained loss of newly developed drugs. Is it possible there's a connection to the hospital's missing medications? To help in the investigation, Lucius turns to his very competent law partner, Harry Harris, and computer wizard, "Horse" - both  very likable additions to the cast of what I assume will be ongoing characters. Everything is resolved rather neatly in the end, with all who deserve comeuppance being appropriately rewarded.

It's all done in a very intriguing but rather complex plot with a ton of characters - all of which taxed my aging brain a bit trying to keep everything and everyone straight, especially those who are sometimes referred to by their first names and other times their last. As for the legal aspect, I personally take great enjoyment in the kind of in-depth explanations that happen here with regularity; but some readers, I think, might find a few of them a bit ponderous. 

In particular, I enjoyed the back-and-forths in the courtroom scenes; it's always fun to see the trip-ups and slip-ups by opposing attorneys as they devise and revise strategies for witness interrogations that are designed to captivate - and hopefully sway - the juries while avoiding the judge's wrath. There's plenty of that here, and without giving away any details, I must say Lucius (with help from partner Harry) adds some well-earned "gotcha" notches in his belt. Put another way, if I needed defending in a court of law, I'd want him next to me at the defense table.

Hopefully, nothing I do for the rest of my life will require his services. In the meantime, I'll be content to get my legal "fix" by way of my Kindle - with the next book in this series on my want-to-read radar.

Kaleidoscope by Alan P. Woodruff (Amazon Digital Services LLC, April 2019); 415 pp.