An Insignificant Case

Margolin (Betrayal) delivers a far-fetched legal thriller about an Oregon attorney who gets tangled up in an ever more ominous web of organized crime. Charlie Webb has led an undistinguished career after graduating from a third-rate law school. Things change when restaurant owner Gretchen Hall and her associate, Yuri Makarov, are found murdered in a park near downtown Portland, with a painting partially covering Gretchen’s corpse. The artist, Guido Sabatini, is arrested for the killings, because he’d recently broken into Gretchen’s restaurant to steal back his painting and, in the process, ended up with a flash drive full of evidence that she and Yuri were sex trafficking young girls. Guido hires Charlie to defend him, thrusting the lawyer into his first high-stakes case. As Charlie fights to keep Guido free, he learns that some of the Pacific Northwest’s most powerful people belonged to Gretchen’s sex trafficking ring, and they’ll stop at nothing to keep their secrets hidden. What begins as a captivating, noir-tinted tale grows increasingly absurd as the twists stack up, culminating in a dreary conclusion sure to make readers groan. This squanders its potential. (Nov.)