John F.
Dobbyn taught law at Villanova Law School for over 40 years. He introduced Boston criminal trial lawyers Michael Knight and Lex
Devlin in short stories published in Alfred Hitchcock’ Mystery Magazine
and Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine before giving them wider scope in
longer adventures. Frame-up (Oceanview, 2010) is the second novel about
the duo.
A legal thriller that is more thriller than legal,
it opens with Michael Knight entering a parking garage a few minutes late to
find his best friend John McKedrick waiting for him, pointing at his watch.
McKedrick turns the ignition in his car and it explodes into flames. Knight had
long been worried about McKedrick’s choice of employer, a lawyer serving the
needs of the local mid-level Mafia soldiers. It seems Knight’s concern had been
more than justified.
Knight learns that McKedrick had been preoccupied
the week before the bombing but no one knew why. Knight continues to ask
questions and before he fully realizes it, he’s dealing with members of the
local Mafia, the Russian Mafia, his long-ago art professor at Harvard, and some
European financiers who don’t ask awkward questions of their clientele. At the
heart of the matter is a rare Vermeer painting known to have been stolen from a
U. S. museum, millions of dollars, and a brewing revolution within the Boston
branch of the Mafia. Just how McKedrick got involved with this imbroglio
puzzles Mitchell throughout the story.
This book is a first-rate piece of escapism. Like
many of his fictional legal ancestors, Mitchell spends far more time
investigating than he does with his law texts or in a courtroom. His escapades
take him to London and to Amsterdam where he plans and executes a hair-raising
scam in Amsterdam, victimizing a Russian gangster who would happily slice him
into bits with little provocation. Mitchell leads a charmed life, though, and
skates through the con unscathed. He is blessed with friends who happily jump
in to help with whatever he’s up to, including one who dropped what he was
doing to fly to Amsterdam to help perpetrate the sting. (I think I have good
friends, but I don’t know who I would call for something like that.)
A subplot in which Devlin’s unexpected ties with the
local Mafia don are revealed rounds out a meticulously plotted and well written
thriller. An excellent contribution to the genre. I am looking for the other
five books in the series.
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ASIN: B003YFJ6G2
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Publisher: Oceanview Publishing;
1st edition (March 8, 2010)
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Publication date: March 8, 2010
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Language: English
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File size: 4193 KB
Aubrey Nye Hamilton ©2023
Aubrey Hamilton is a
former librarian who works on Federal It projects by day and reads mysteries at
night.
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