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A Novel
by Justin Peacock
A concrete floor three hundred feet up in the Aurora Tower condo development in SoHo has collapsed, hurling three workers to their deaths. The developer, Roth Properties (owned by the famously abrasive Simon Roth), faces a vast tangle of legal problems, including allegations of mob connections. Roth’s longtime lawyers, the elite midtown law firm of Blake and Wolcott, is assigned the task of cleaning up the mess. Much of the work lands on the plate of smart, cynical, and seasoned associate Duncan Riley; as a result, he falls into the powerful orbit of Leah Roth, the beautiful daughter of Simon Roth and the designated inheritor of his real estate empire.
Meanwhile, Riley pursues a seemingly small pro bono case in which he attempts to forestall the eviction of Rafael Nazario and his grandmother from public housing in the wake of a pot bust. One night Rafael is picked up and charged with the murder of the private security cop who caught him, a murder that took place in another controversial “mixed income” housing development being built by ... Roth Properties. Duncan Riley is now walking the knife edge of legal ethics and personal morality.
"Starred Review. The prose is perfectly tuned, drawing the reader in without ever getting in the way. Peacock writes compellingly about issues of class, identity and justice while still managing to keep the plot barreling irresistibly along." - Kirkus
"Peacock underdoes his characters' psychology, while the deus ex machina Riley uses to prove a sinister plot undercuts the book's atmosphere of gritty realism." - Publishers Weekly
"Dense, enthralling, complex, and extremely satisfying, Justin Peacock's Blind Man's Alley is an absolutely captivating read from an exceptionally talented writer who know his stuff inside out." - John Lescroart, author of A Plague of Secrets
This information about Blind Man's Alley was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Justin Peacock received an MFA from Columbia University and a law degree from Yale. His legal experience ranges from death-penalty defense to First Amendment cases to big firm litigation. He is also the author of A Cure for Night (2008). He lives in Brooklyn.
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