The Rough Cut

by Douglas Corleone

Overview

Riley Vasher hasn't spoken to her friend Piper Kingsley for years . . . now she's making a documentary about her murder.

Documentary filmmaker Riley Vasher has been living a low-key life on the island of Oahu with her long-time boyfriend Brody. This all changes when Brody overhears on his police scanner that popular TV weathergirl Piper Kingsley has been murdered.

When Piper's boyfriend, Ethan Jakes, is arrested for the crime, a high-profile murder trial is sure to follow - and Riley and Brody sense their chance to make a name for themselves.

Riley convinces Ethan she can help him if they make a documentary about the trial, and recommends the brilliant but eccentric defense lawyer Nicholas Church. But as the trial nears and Riley becomes personally involved in the case, the lines of truth soon begin to blur and she finds herself becoming part of the story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780727889867
Publisher:	Severn House
Publication date:	01/05/2021
Edition description:	Main
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.55(w) x 8.74(h) x (d)

About the Author

A former criminal defense lawyer in New York, Douglas Corleone is now based in Honolulu. Douglas was a winner of the Minotaur Book/Mystery Writers of America First Crime Novel Award and a finalist for the 2010 Shamus Award for his debut One Man's Paradise. www.douglascorleone.com

Editorial Reviews

11/16/2020

Film director Riley Vasher, the narrator of this clever, witty series launch from Corleone (the Simon Fisk thrillers), has moved with her lover, cameraman Brody Quinlan, from New York to Hawaii, where they’ve been living off the inheritance left to Riley by her late mentor, an NYU film teacher. But time and money are running out. Riley is on the eve of 30 and feeling the pressure to embark on her first full-length documentary. The murder of a local weather forecaster provides her with a worthy subject, though she has her misgivings: “This film could be our Titanic. Either the doomed ship, or 1997’s Oscar Winner for Best Picture. And, I admit, it’s disquieting that we won’t know which until the final cut.” The tension builds as the action shifts between the speedy murder investigation and subsequent trial and the period six months after the crime when Riley is editing the film down to its final version. Some may suspect whodunit early on, but plausible alternatives will keep readers guessing. Corleone offers a thoughtful look at how easily the legal system and the media can be manipulated. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

“Corleone is an excellent plotter … Another winner from an accomplished mystery writer” – Booklist

“A clever, witty series launch … Corleone offers a thoughtful look at how easily the legal system and the media can be manipulated” – Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Corleone's prose is lean, his plotting tight, his characters vividly drawn

Booklist on Gone Cold

Corvelli is a likable, pill-popping lawyer, and the secondary characters are Elmore Leonard quirky

Booklist on Last Lawyer Standing

Corleone's prose is lean, his plotting tight, his characters vividly drawn

null Booklist on Gone Cold

Corvelli is a likable, pill-popping lawyer, and the secondary characters are Elmore Leonard quirky

null Booklist on Last Lawyer Standing

2020-09-17
A newly minted filmmaker pulls out all the stops in her maiden attempt to shoot a compelling documentary on a criminal trial whose outcome is far from certain.

Even before he meets musician Ethan Jakes, Detective Lance Fukumoto of the Honolulu Police Department has already decided that he killed his girlfriend, TV weather forecaster Piper Kingsley. The case would be open and shut (mostly shut) if Riley Vasher, an acquaintance who had enjoyed Piper’s Hawaiian hospitality several years earlier after Piper impulsively invited her on Facebook, weren’t shopping for a project that would launch her and Brody Quinlan, her cinematographer and lover, into the mediasphere. Talking prison-averse Ethan out of his suicidal tendencies, Riley convinces his brother Nathan, who morphed from Ethan’s musical partner into a wealthy and successful lawyer, into bankrolling his defense by Nicholas Church, a former prosecutor whose savage criticism by Marissa Linden’s miniseries The Prosecutor led him to the defense of capital cases. Of course Riley wants Church to get Ethan acquitted, but she also wants to make a crackerjack movie. Sometimes those two goals go hand in hand; sometimes, as Corleone shows, they don’t. As the stakes rise for all parties, Riley, who has a habit of spicing her first-person chapters with coy double-entendres (“I like when people watch”), realizes more and more clearly that “this film could be our Titanic. Either the doomed ship, or…[the] Best Picture.”

A sharply plotted legal drama with a double-barreled climax.

Kirkus Reviews