Justice Gone
by N.
Lombardi Jr.
GENRE: Thriller (legal)
BLURB:
When
a homeless war veteran is beaten to death by the police, stormy protests ensue,
engulfing a small New Jersey town. Soon after, three cops are gunned down.
A multi-state manhunt
is underway for a cop killer on the loose. And Dr. Tessa Thorpe, a veteran's
counselor, is caught up in the chase.
Donald Darfield, an
African-American Iraqi war vet, war-time buddy of the beaten man, and one of
Tessa's patients, is holed up in a mountain cabin. Tessa, acting on instinct,
sets off to find him, but the swarm of law enforcement officers gets there
first, leading to Darfield's dramatic capture.
Now, the only people
separating him from the lethal needle of state justice are Tessa and ageing
blind lawyer, Nathaniel Bodine. Can they untangle the web tightening around
Darfield in time, when the press and the justice system are baying for revenge?
Excerpt:
Tessa had given much thought as to how she should dress for the occasion. Her first instinct was her Karen Kane pants suit, but dismissed that idea to wear her copper-brown print kaftan in its stead.
Now, with its folds caught in the vigorous September breeze, giving the illusion of a multitude of miniature flags fluttering around her, her thick locks of hair dancing around her head, she spoke to the crowd, slowly, deliberately taking her time. “Hello, my fellow citizens.” She stopped to survey the mass of people standing in front of her. Dramatic pauses replete with eye contact, if not overdone, were quite effective in getting one’s message across. Not surprisingly, Tessa knew how to get her message across, a special art in the realm of behavioral scientists. Public relations firms, advertising companies, political campaigns, all hired an army of psychologists to sell a product. And Tessa Thorpe, as someone who had thirty years’ experience as a criminal psychiatrist, could sell as well as any of them.
“We are here today for two reasons, two very important reasons that are essential to our well-being in a modern society. Freedom is one, and justice is the other.”
Enthusiastic cheers.
“When the call for war came, we were told that our enemies hated our freedoms. We were told that the citizens of Iraq had been held hostage by a ruthless dictator who denied his own people these freedoms. Our invasion of that country was sold to us as Operation Iraqi Freedom. And so we sent our young men and women off to war, the most traumatic experience a human being could ever go through, with the belief that they were fighting for liberty and freedom. And yet, one of those whom we had sent…had come back to us only to have his own freedom denied. His single offence at the time he was approached by law enforcement officers was that he was exercising his freedom to stand on a street corner.”
This elicited a roar from the crowd.
“This is not merely tragic, it is an act of deplorable fraud, being denied the very thing he fought for!”
More heartfelt cheering.
“When I was young, we were made to pledge allegiance, an oath that ended with the phrase, ‘with liberty and justice for all.’ Well, Jay Felson was denied liberty…let us make sure he is NOT DENIED JUSTICE!”
My Review:
A homeless war veteran, Jay Felson is beaten to death by six
police officers. A bartender makes a call to 911 stating that someone was in
the parking lot missing with all the vehicles when the police men arrived on
the scene they started to hit him with their clubs and Taser him over and over.
Jay had no idea what he had done to deserve this and he kept calling out for
his father.
Dr. Tessa Thorne a veteran’s therapist is worried about one
of her patients Donald Darfield as no one has seen nor heard from him in a
while. Donald, an African-American Iraqi war vet and Jay became best friends
when they met during the war. When Donald heard about Jay’s death he had to
know if it was real if he was dead or not and left to find out.
Someone is killing the police officers who beat up Jay.
Donald is arrested for killing the police men. Tessa and Donald’s lawyer
Nathaniel Bodine a blind man is Donald’s only hope for justice. Did Donald kill
the police officers to extract revenge for his friend? Is Donald innocent of
all charges? Who killed the police officers?
Justice Gone has many, many secrets between its pages. It
starts out with action on the first page and keeps going with lots of twists
and turns. It will have you guessing from the first page and the ending is a
shocker. I never saw it coming. Justice Gone is one of those books where you
may need to keep a box of tissue close by just in case. There are some graphic
scenes that are very upsetting and horrific. Justice Gone is based off of a
true story and it is very believable.
I would recommend Justice Gone to anyone who likes a good
thriller, suspense or mystery filled with lots of twists and turns.
AUTHOR Bio
and Links:
N.
Lombardi Jr, the N for Nicholas, has spent over half his life in Africa, Asia,
and the Middle East, working as a groundwater geologist. Nick can speak five
languages: Swahili, Thai, Lao, Chinese, and Khmer (Cambodian).
In
1997, while visiting Lao People's Democratic Republic, he witnessed the
remnants of a secret war that had been waged for nine years, among which were
children wounded from leftover cluster bombs. Driven by what he saw, he worked
on The Plain of Jars for the next eight years.
Nick
maintains a website with content that spans most aspects of the novel: The
Secret War, Laotian culture, Buddhism etc. http://plainofjars.net
His
second novel, Journey Towards a Falling Sun, is set in the wild frontier of
northern Kenya.
His
latest novel, Justice Gone was inspired by the fatal beating of a homeless man
by police.
Nick
now lives in Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Visit
his Goodreads
page
Book
links:
Giveaway:
$15 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC
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3 comments:
Thanks for sharing the great post and awesome giveaway!
Good review, sounds like an interesting story
Much thanks for posting a review of my book
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