A Shattered Circle

Since falling off a stepladder, New York City Supreme Court Justice Bill Lonergan, the protagonist of Egan’s excellent third legal thriller (after 2015’s The Missing Piece), has been displaying symptoms of dementia. With his job at risk, Lonergan’s devoted wife, Barbara, who’s also his secretary, does all she can to shield him from any adverse consequences, even as she searches desperately for some helpful treatment options. Her task is made harder when Andrew Norwood, a disgruntled unsuccessful litigant, files a complaint of judicial misconduct against her husband. Meanwhile, a dying man, Ralphie Rago, who was convicted 25 years earlier of murdering a law clerk at 60 Centre Street, the Manhattan courthouse where Judge Lonergan works, asks an old friend, court officer Foxx, to reinvestigate the case to find the real killer. And an attorney, Ken Palmer, is drowned while fishing in the Catskills by a present-day murderer embarking on a mysterious vendetta. Egan populates this standalone, his best to date, with characters readers will empathize with and cleverly resolves each of the multiple story lines. Agent: Ben Bova, Barbara Bova Literary Agency. (Mar.)