Beach Road

by James Patterson, Peter de Jonge

Overview

Dark mysteries come to East Hampton while a struggling lawyer fights to save his friend from being framed for a triple murder.


Montauk lawyer Tom Dunleavy's client list is woefully small-occasional real estate closings barely keep him in paper clips. So when he is hired to defend a local man accused in a triple murder in East Hampton, he knows that he has found the case of his lifetime.


The crime turns the glittering playground for the super-rich into a blazing inferno. Dunleavy's client is a local hero, but he knows the case rests on money, deception, and forbidden desires. His client will be framed-unless he can find the key to the case.


When Dunleavy is joined by his former flame, the savvy and well-connected attorney, Kate Costello, he believes he has a chance. But payback is a bitch, especially from the rich. The violent retaliations of billionaires threatened by his investigation exceed anything Dunleavy has ever seen. With the entire nation's eyes on him in a new Trial of the Century, Dunleavy orchestrates a series of revelations that lead to a stunning outcome-and the truth is wilder than anything he ever imagined.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780446619141
Publisher:	Grand Central Publishing
Publication date:	05/29/2007
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	111,217
Product dimensions:	4.25(w) x 7.50(h) x 1.12(d)

About the Author

James Patterson has had more New York Times bestsellers than any other writer, ever, according to Guinness World Records. Since his first novel won the Edgar Award in 1977 James Patterson's books have sold more than 300 million copies. He is the author of the Alex Cross novels, the most popular detective series of the past twenty-five years, including Kiss the Girls and Along Came a Spider. He writes full-time and lives in Florida with his family.

Hometown:

Palm Beach, Florida

Date of Birth:

March 22, 1947

Place of Birth:

Newburgh, New York

Education:

B.A., Manhattan College, 1969; M.A., Vanderbilt University, 1971

Website:

http://www.jamespatterson.com

Read an Excerpt

Beach Road

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By James Patterson Peter de Jonge

Little, Brown

Copyright © 2006 James Patterson
All right reserved.
ISBN: 0-316-16711-8

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Chapter One

Nikki Robinson

SEVENTEEN AND CRIMINALLY CUTE, Nikki Robinson sulks through the sultry afternoon trying to keep from staring at her useless shocking-pink cell phone. She hasn't heard from Feifer in three days and is getting the awful feeling she's already been dumped and just hasn't been told yet.

So when Nikki's cell rings while she's waiting in line to pay for her drink at Kwik Mart, her heart goes off with it. She grabs for the phone so fast her best friend, Rowena, behind the counter flashes her a disapproving look that says, "Chill, girl."

Rowena is all about maintaining dignity under romantic duress, and as usual, she's right. It's only Maidstone Interiors calling about a cleaning job for Nikki out in Montauk.

Nikki has been working for Maidstone all summer and likes it okay, but the thing about Maidstone is that she never knows where they're going to send her.

It takes Nikki forty minutes to drive from Kings Highway in Bridgehampton to Montauk, and another five to find the hilly neighborhood perched just above Route 27 where all the streets are named for dead presidents-and not the recent ones, the ones who have been dead awhile.

Forty-one Monroe is neither a mansion nor a dump, but somewhere in between, and as soon as she gets through the door,she sees it's nothing catastrophic and was probably rented by a couple, maybe a small family.

Besides the steady money, what Nikki likes best about this job is that she's alone. She may be cleaning white folks' houses, but at least they aren't standing over her shoulder, watching and supervising her every move. Plus she can dress how she wants, and so she pulls off her jeans and T-shirt, revealing a skimpy two-piece bathing suit underneath. She puts on her headphones and some R. Kelly, and gets busy.

Nikki starts with the ground-floor bedroom. She gathers the dirty towels and strips the sheets, balls them up in a giant damp pile, and wrestles it down the steep basement staircase. She quickly gets the first load of wash running, then races all the way up to the second floor, and by now her dark skin, which she sometimes loves and sometimes hates, is shimmering.

When she reaches the landing, there's a funky smell in the air, as if someone's been burning incense or, now that she gets a better whiff, smoking reefer.

That's nothing too out of the ordinary. Renters can be stoners too.

But when Nikki swings open the door to the master bedroom, her heart jumps into her mouth, and yet somehow she manages to scream and to think, The white devil.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Beach Road by James Patterson Peter de Jonge Copyright © 2006 by James Patterson . Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

The life of Montauk lawyer Tom Dunleavy bears no resemblance to those of his TV counterparts. Day after day, he scrapes by with routine real estate closings; nothing more exciting ever comes his way. Then one day, out of the blue, he is hired to defend a local hero accused of a triple homicide. Almost immediately, this honest advocate realizes that his hapless client is only a fall guy, but proving it involves dangerous liaisons with people privy to sordid secrets of the Hamptons rich. To solve the case, Dunleavy reconnects with former girlfriend and hotshot attorney Kate Costello. James Patterson in full flight.

Bestseller Patterson shows signs of having gone to the well too often in this slapdash collaboration with de Jonge, his coauthor on The Beach House (2002). Tom Dunleavy, a former professional basketball player and local East Hampton legend, is getting by as an underworked and unmotivated attorney. His sports glory days and his one true love are long in the past, but he gets second chances at personal and professional redemption when three locals are gunned down, apparently in the aftermath of racial tensions arising from a heated pickup game of hoops. The police seize on Dante Halleyville, the country's best high school star, as their suspect, and Dunleavy must dust off his old courtroom skills and enlist his lost love, Kate Costello, as his partner. Patterson readers know to expect a surprise ending, but he leaves too few possibilities for many to be genuinely fooled. Fans can only hope that Patterson soon returns to the level he achieved with his Alex Cross series. (May) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

A struggling Montauk lawyer agrees to defend a local man accused of murdering several flashy Hamptons types and finds himself in the midst of another trial of the century. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

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