Book Review: DeadLocked

Reviewed By: Pat Reid - RAM

DeadLocked     Amazon US PB Amazon Canada PB
Joel Goldman
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Legal Setting   Thriller
Series: Lou Mason # 4
Pinnacle Books, 2005, 400 pps.

This is the 4th book in Joel Goldman’s Lou Mason series and the best one yet. Lou Mason is an attorney in Kansas City, Missouri.

His aunt raised Lou after his parents were killed in a car wreck. Harry Ryman is a retired homicide detective who had dated Lou’s Aunt Claire for the better part of Lou’s life. Lou was driving Harry who was beginning to lose his vision to the prison to witness the execution of Ryan Kowalczyk. Harry along with Blues, Lou’s landlord, had been the arresting officers. Ryan had been found guilty in the deaths of Graham and Elizabeth Byrnes. The Byrnes’ had been killed while their baby son slept in the backseat of their car.

Ryan was charged along with Whitney King who was with him on that night but only Ryan was found guilty of the murders. While Harry & Lou waited for the execution to begin Lou struck up a conversation with Nick Byrnes, son of Graham and Elizabeth. Nick’s grandparents had kept the murders a secret from him until he was twelve when he discovered the truth about the death of his parents. While Lou was talking with Nick he mentioned that his parents had also been killed in a car accident and Nick commented Right, that’s what I was told too. A chance remark from Nick makes Lou begin to dwell on the accident that kills his parents.

The next day Lou gains two new clients. Ryan’s mother who wants him to prove that her son was innocent of the murders that brought about his execution. Then Nick shows up and he wants to hire Lou to sue Whitney King for the wrongful deaths of his parents.

This is an exciting story that leads Lou into danger and to understand the entire story behind his parent’s car accident.

Pat Reid - RAM

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Pat Reid - RAM