Mitigating Circumstances

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

Overview

This dead-on convincing thriller about a woman law enforcer's fevered pursuit of a criminal abounds with the authenticity Nancy Taylor Rosenberg brings to it. As a former investigator, she offers intimate knowledge of how crime and punishment really work-on both sides of the law.

Set in the crowded courts and glamorous suburbs of Southern California, this compulsively readable novel tells the story of Lily Forrester, a feisty, dedicated District Attorney on the rise in her professional career and on the brink in her private life. Newly appointed as Chief of the Sex Crimes Division, Lily is eager to plunge into a job she has long coveted. At the same time, she is coping with a floundering marriage and the lure of a man to whom she is strongly attracted.

All that keeps Lily's marriage together and keeps her from losing herself entirely in work is her quirky thirteen-year-old daughter, Shana. But when an intruder invades Lily's home and commits an unspeakable act, Lily Forrester heads out on a trial of vengeance beyond any law but that of her own rage. With one shattering act, her life spins out of control into a realm of unimaginable uncertainty. Suddenly, she is agonizingly alone, with a circle of danger closing in around her, leaving her no place to run, no place to hide, and no one to trust. For Lily Forrester has already gone too far to turn back.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781440151071
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	06/04/2009
Pages:	372
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.83(d)

Editorial Reviews

A former cop's page-burning tale of a rape victim's vengeance that offers thrills and emotionalism aplenty—as well as the most cleverly calculated defense of vigilantism since Brian Garfield's Death Wish of 20 years ago. The rape, which comes early here, is as shocking as any in fiction, detailed in graphic slow-motion prose as heroine Lily Forrester is sodomized at knifepoint by a young Hispanic. What will make readers really cringe, though, is that Lily's 13-year-old daughter, Shana, is raped alongside her mom. The kicker is that Lily is an assistant D.A. (of the fictional city of Oxnard, California); but despite her fierce allegiance to the law, right after the rape, Lily, flush with rage, i.d.'s the rapist, blows him away, then covers her tracks: She alone knows that the man shot dead by an unknown assailant raped her and her daughter. Though first-novelist Rosenberg uses a steam shovel to stack readers' sympathies toward Lily—subplots reveal that the rapist had killed twice before, and that, as a child, Lily had been raped repeatedly by her grandfather—the author offers a convincingly complex portrait of the aftermath of the crimes: of Shana's shattered world, and of Lily's breakdown as she's ravaged by guilt yet terrified of being caught. The tension escalates as Oxnard's best detective catches the case, and it goes over the top when a lineup of suspects corralled by the cops reveals that Lily may have killed the wrong man. Will Lily be found out, and, even if not, will she be able to live with her terrible remorse? Suffice it to say that Rosenberg punches all the right buttons to create a climax awash in rousing moral righteousness; but readers—andthis first novel will have many—may note to their discomfort that, ultimately, Lily really isn't much more than Charles Bronson in a designer dress. (Film rights to Tri-Star; Literary Guild Main Selection for May)

Kirkus Reviews