A sharp legal thriller that doesn’t let up until the last body hits the floor.
Frank Connor is broke. After a couple of high-profile murder accusations tanked his reputation and dried up his law practice, he’s gone nine months without steady income, and the IRS is closing in on back taxes he can’t pay. He thinks fortune has finally turned when he’s offered a full-time job at Dickie Glatz’s law firm, an enviable gig with a six-figure salary attached. Pretty quickly, he is assigned a role on a major insurance denial case after the previous attorney is abruptly forced out amid murky, unresolved allegations. The assignment sounds simple enough to Frank. Oilman Ridge Salter slipped and hit his head aboard his sailboat in the Gulf, then fell overboard and drowned. All Risk Life and Indemnity refuses to release the forty million dollars they owe to Ridge’s widow, Hayden, and Frank’s own livelihood depends on making the company pay. But when he digs into the file, he realizes things may not be as cut and dried as he originally thought. Key documents are missing, and Frank starts to wonder if the job wasn’t the lucky break it seemed. What looked like an accident is almost certainly murder, the widow is hiding something, Dickie’s firm isn’t a dream job after all, and if Frank can’t figure out his next move, he could lose everything.
CD Wilsher’s A Hall of Mirrors is an entertaining mystery that reads with the relentless pace of a thriller and the authority of a seasoned trial lawyer. Despite intense courtroom scenes, the legal proceedings are easy for readers to follow. Short chapters and frequent cliffhangers propel the story forward, while the plot’s many threads and entanglements pull in different directions. Distinct and complex character development elevates Wilsher’s immersive writing. From Mouse Davis and his one-man snooping operation to Edie, the boss’s seductive daughter, each character adds color to the story. Dickie Glatz is a particular delight. He’s a walking Texas stereotype in cowboy boots and pinstripes, prone to red-faced rants, and proud of the piranhas in his office as a running joke about wanting to see some bloodshed. Frank is a sympathetic figure, competent and compromised, enticed by quick money and honest enough to admit it. Even with some darker scenes, the novel doesn’t take itself too seriously. The humor stays dry, the stakes stay real, and the tone stays relatively light without blunting the suspense. Twisty, sardonic, and entirely satisfying, A Hall of Mirrors is a sharp legal thriller that doesn’t let up until the last body hits the floor.
