The Guilty Die Twice | Book Review
The Guilty Die Twice by Don Heartshorn was gifted to me by TCKPublishing for an honest review.
It’s been a while since I’ve read a legal thriller. It’s not a genre I find myself reading often. I tend more towards mysteries, which The Guilty Die Twice provides, in addition to family drama and political intrigue. Overall, Heartshorn gives the reader a thrilling ride through a complex legal and political system where big decisions are made by old white guys in smoke-filled rooms.
The main plot follows estranged brothers Jake and Travis Lynch as they prepare to prosecute and defend the same case. Ten years before the story begins, Jake and Travis have a falling out that divides the Lynch family. Travis, suffering a crisis of consciousness around the death penalty resigns as Jake’s assistant at the District Attorney’s office, breaks with his family, and stakes out on his own. Jake begins to climb the political ladder and is voted in as DA of Austin, Texas. While Jake’s ambition leads to prosperity, Travi’s conviction of character leaves him struggling to pay the bills. Instead of charging what he’s worth, Travis takes trades of goods and services along with IOUs for this legal practice, knowing that most of his clients are also struggling financially.
The plot’s mystery revolves around the case that brings the Lynch brothers back together. Dubbed ‘The Rich Kid Murders’ by a local reporter Christine Morton, the mystery centers on who killed the rich kids? Was it Sam Park, Roger Laubach, or Mark Kidd, three teens from the wrong side of town?
There are two aspects of the story that go awry for me. The first is the murder. The piece of the novel which builds the mystery is that the scene where the actual murder takes place is omitted from the narrative. It is up to Jake and Travis to piece together the events of the evening and to figure out why it happened in the first place. This omission that creates the mystery is incredibly jarring. I had to reread the chapter before and after twice to make sure I hadn’t missed anything. The scene goes from Sam, Mark, and Roger showing up to Sam and Roger standing around confused, questioning what happened, and Mark running off.
The way the scene is written made me feel as if Sam and his crew showed up to find the Rich Kids already dead instead of being responsible for it. If this angle had been played up, the mystery might have been more compelling. Instead, the mystery is who pulled the trigger and why.
Another aspect that didn’t sit well with me was the female characters. Jake’s wife Rita is power-hungry and wants Jake to run for governor so she can have bragging rights. Shirley, Travis’s pregnant wife is constantly nagging him about how they can’t pay the bills and never protests when people place their hands on her baby belly (which pregnant hate). She finally gets so fed up with his trad-for-legal-work motto that she goes behind Travis’s back to his sister Clair for clients. Clair runs the Lynch legal legacy with her father. She does call her brothers out on their shenanigans but is such a tertiary character it hardly registers. Reporter Christine Morton is a hell-beast that will get her story no matter how many backs she has to dig her stilettos into to get it. She does seem to have a bit of growth at the end of the novel, but the reader is left to decide whether her growth is real or just talk. Karla the hooker (I’m not sure she has a last name) is never referred to as a sex worker, which sums up how the other characters view her in the story. Then there’s Mama Lynch, the elusive matriarch all the Lynch kids speak of with reverence and fear, but only has two scenes in the book where she’s more grandmotherly than the force of nature she’s made out to be.
While it may seem like there are lots of female characters in The Guilty Die Twice, their presence is minimal. Christine Morton and Shirley Lynch appear the most, yet Christine only raises the ire in the Lynches and Shirly creates guilt in Travis.
My take away from how the female characters are written is that this book is meant for a male audience. I am not its target demographic, and that’s fine. Not every book is written with me in mind. It would be ridiculous for me to expect every book to appeal to me personally. Yet, I was constantly reminded that The Guilty Die Twice is written by a man based solely on how the female characters are written.
While I wasn’t a fan of some of the characters, the copious male bravado, and the missed opportunity with the mystery, I did enjoy Heartshorn’s novel. The Guilty Die Twice is full of heart, excitement, a little backstabbing, and political intrigue to keep most readers engaged and turning the pages.
