Review – Her Deadly Game by Robert Dugoni @robertdugoni #herdeadlygame

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I love a good start to a book, and Robert Dugoni’s Prologue for Her Deadly Game had me hooked from the opening page.

Keera Duggan is a prime example of why you don’t cross professional boundries in the workplace. Because her romantic relationship with a senior colleague ended badly, she was pushed out of her job as a Seattle prosecutor. She feels she has no choice, but to return to the family criminal defense law firm.

Keera was a professional chess player, and it will take all her moves to save her client from a life sentence. I do like the push pull of whether what she is doing is right or wrong. Her father, Patsy, an esteemed defense lawyer until alcohol took over his life, keeps stressing to her that it is her job to give the client the best defense possible and it is the prosecutor’s job to convict him.

This was going to be the game of her life.

I had a feeling about what happened, I just couldn’t figure out the how of it. Guess you can find most anything on Google.

It didn’t take me long to get involved in Keera’s world. The characters and scenarios are realistic and the book was impossible to put down. The mystery and suspense kept the story flowing at a rapid pace. The deeper into the story I got, the more I was determined to find out the ending before going to bed…and I made it.

In the acknowledgments, Robert Dugoni shares that he likes to give each novel a challenge. In Her Deadly Game he creates a dysfunctional family, and a character, Keera, who escaped a future of alcoholism by becoming a chess prodigy. He knows that some lawyers are very good chess players and I think he wove the game throughout the story with panache.

I want to thank Thomas & Mercer for the opportunity to read and review Her Deadly Game by Robert Dugoni.

Animated Animals. Pictures, Images and Photos
4 Stars

A defense attorney is prepared to play. But is she a pawn in a master’s deadly match? A twisting novel of suspense by New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni.

Keera Duggan was building a solid reputation as a Seattle prosecutor, until her romantic relationship with a senior colleague ended badly. For the competitive former chess prodigy, returning to her family’s failing criminal defense law firm to work for her father is the best shot she has. With the right moves, she hopes to restore the family’s reputation, her relationship with her father, and her career.

Keera’s chance to play in the big leagues comes when she’s retained by Vince LaRussa, an investment adviser accused of murdering his wealthy wife. There’s little hard evidence against him, but considering the couple’s impending and potentially nasty divorce, LaRussa faces life in prison. The prosecutor is equally challenging: Miller Ambrose, Keera’s former lover, who’s eager to destroy her in court on her first homicide defense.

As Keera and her team follow the evidence, they uncover a complicated and deadly game that’s more than Keera bargained for. When shocking information turns the case upside down, Keera must decide between her duty to her client, her family’s legacy, and her own future.

  • Genre: Fiction, Legal, Mystery, Suspense, Thriller
  • Format: 396 pages, Hardcover
  • Published: March 28, 2023 by Thomas & Mercer
  • Series: Keera Duggan #1

Robert Dugoni is the critically acclaimed New York Times, and #1 Amazon bestselling author of the Tracy Crosswhite police series set in Seattle, which has sold more than 11 million books worldwide. He is also the author of The Charles Jenkins espionage series, the David Sloane legal thriller series, and The Keera Duggan legal thriller series. He has written several stand-alone novels including the historical novels A Killing on the Hill and Hold Strong, as well as the suspense novel The 7th Canon, and Damage Control. He has written the literary novels, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell – one of Newsweek Magazine’s Best Books of All-Time and Suspense Magazine’s 2018 Book of the Year, for which Dugoni’s narration won an AudioFile Earphones Award. He has also written the critically acclaimed novel, The World Played Chess; as well as the nonfiction exposé The Cyanide Canary, a Washington Post Best Book of the Year. His novels have been optioned for movies and television series. Dugoni is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Award for Fiction and a four-time winner of the Friends of Mystery Spotted Owl Award for best novel set in the Pacific Northwest. He has also been a finalist for many other awards including the International Thriller Award, the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, the Silver Falchion Award for mystery, and the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Award.

Robert Dugoni’s books are sold in more than thirty-five countries and have been translated into more than thirty languages.

Visit his website at www.robertdugoni.com, and follow him on twitter @robertdugoni and on Facebook at www.facebook.com/AuthorRobertDugoni

 

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Empathy For A Psycopath – Duplicity by Sibel Hodge @sibelhodge

I am doing my best to finish up on overdue reviews and Duplicity by Sibel Hodge is one of those. I received the book back in October of 2016. Seems I really overdid things that year.

I will tell you that I gave Duplicity 5 Stars, so I have no excuses for not posting the review in a timely fashion. I think you may be able to relate to my problem, too many clicks and yeses. I just wanted to grab them all.

Cover: Blacksheep Design

Duplicity

Amazon / Audiobook / Goodreads

MY REVIEW

With a cover like Duplicity by Sibel Hodge, I just know there is some good stuff inside. I read Untouchable by Sibel Hodge and loved it, so I was eager to begin Duplicity.

Duplicity starts out ugly, making me think of Clarise in Hannibal…but severely damaged, twisted.

A terrible, abhorrent childhood with an abusive father, neglectful mother, screaming, yelling, isolation…I want to have sympathy…

I love this kind of book. I love to read about serial killers, psychopaths and sociopaths. To delve into their fictional, or true, mind fascinates me. No matter how much I understand it is not their fault they are what they are, they still make choices.

Psychopaths have no feelings, but are they all killers? They are smart, having to learn to fake all the emotions that ‘normal’ people have. Sometimes one pivotal moment can take someone down a path they never saw coming.

How do so many incompetents get high paying jobs that require knowledge and tact…which they don’t have? Does he have the skills to solve the case, to bring down a murderer? We shall see.

Twists! Turns! Surprises! I LOVE IT! OMG. Sure didn’t see that coming.

The writing and pacing, creativity, twists and turns, suspense and AHA moments kept me on the edge, glued to the pages, unable to stop reading, waiting for the next shoe to drop and who would drop with it. I don’t think there will be a happy ever after here.

As I flip through my notes, on paper and in my Kindle, I am even more upset with myself that I didn’t review this immediately. It is hard to express my emotions since it has been so long, but this is everything I love in a thrilling, chilling, creepalicious psychopath, and of course all the other characters. Sibel Hodge is definitely an author that will be at the top of my reading list.

I voluntarily reviewed a free copy of Duplicity by Sibel Hodge.

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5 Stars

GOODREADS BLURB

There are three sides to every story: Yours. Mine. And the truth…

Max and Alissa have a fairy tale life—newlywed, madly in love and enviously rich. Then Max is brutally stabbed to death at their home and Alissa, miraculously, escapes with her life. But why was she spared?

The hunt for the killer begins, uncovering a number of leads—was Max’s incredible wealth the motive? Had his shady business practices finally caught up with him? Or was it a stalker with a dangerous obsession?

Devoted friends rally around gentle, sweet Alissa as she is left to mourn the loss of her husband and pick up her life. But not everyone is who they seem…Deep-rooted jealousies, secrets and twisted love lie just beneath the surface, and not all fairy tales have a happy ending.

Duplicity is a suspenseful thriller from the bestselling author of Look Behind You and Where the Memories Lie.

ABOUT SIBEL HODGE

Sibel Hodge is the author of the #1 Bestsellers Look Behind You, Untouchable, and Duplicity. Her books have sold over one million copies and are international bestsellers in the UK, USA, Australia, France, Canada and Germany. She writes in an eclectic mix of genres, and is a passionate human and animal rights advocate.

Sibel Hodge

Her work has been nominated and shortlisted for numerous prizes, including the Harry Bowling Prize, the Yeovil Literary Prize, the Chapter One Promotions Novel Competition, The Romance Reviews’ prize for Best Novel with Romantic Elements and Indie Book Bargains’ Best Indie Book of 2012 in two categories. She was the winner of Best Children’s Book in the 2013 eFestival of Words; nominated for the 2015 BigAl’s Books and Pals Young Adult Readers’ Choice Award; winner of the Crime, Thrillers & Mystery Book from a Series Award in the SpaSpa Book Awards 2013; winner of the Readers’ Favorite Young Adult (Coming of Age) Honorable award in 2015; a New Adult finalist in the Oklahoma Romance Writers of America’s International Digital Awards 2015, and 2017 International Thriller Writers Award finalist for Best E-book Original Novel. Her novella Trafficked: The Diary of a Sex Slave has been listed as one of the top forty books about human rights by Accredited Online Colleges.

For Sibel’s latest book releases, giveaways and gossip, sign up to her newsletter at www.sibelhodge.com/contact-followme.php.

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MY SIBEL HODGE REVIEWS

Untouchable

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