legal thrillers | Musings of the Monster Librarian

Book Review: When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland

When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland

Union Square & Co, 2024

ISBN 978-1-4549-5231-2

ISBN 978-1-4549-5232-9 (e-book)

Available: Paperback, Kindle edition

When Cicadas Cry by Caroline Cleveland is an engaging murder mystery.

A beautiful, young, white woman is bludgeoned to death in rural South Carolina church. A young black accountant, covered in blood, crouches over her. In the eyes of the prosecutor and most of the whites in the town, the young man’s guilt is clear. A disgraced lawyer reluctantly agrees to defend the young man in what seems like a lost cause. But he must also deal with ra town torn by racial tensions.

Thirty-four years earlier, two teenage girls were murdered in the same town. Their case was never solved. As a novel approach, the author weaves the first-person voice of the true killer into the plot. The reader is challenged to identify the killer among the novel’s many characters.

The author, being a practicing lawyer, weaves interesting insights about lawyerly thinking and courtroom procedures into her story. The novel’s style and plot twists will remind readers of mysteries by other lawyer-novelists, such as John Grisham.

Recommended: young adults

Contains: gore, mild sex

Reviewed by Robert D. Yee

Book Review: Compulsion by Meyer Levin

Compulsion: A Novel by Meyer Levin

Fig Tree Books, 2015 (Originally Simon & Schuster, 1956)

ISBN-13: 978-1941493021

Available: Pre-order paperback (April, 2015)

There is a fine line between horror fiction and the fictionalized true crime novel.

Meyer Levin’s Compulsion is considered the founding classic of the genre of the fictionalized true crime novel, popularized by Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. The events contained in Compulsion are based on a real case, thinly veiled into novel form, with names changed to protect the not-so-innocent. The source of the horror is in the minds of the two successful college students who murder a child, simply as an intellectual exercise.

This new reprint of the 1956 novel shows its age from time to time. It is based on the case of Leopold and Loeb, which took place in 1924 Chicago, and was considered the crime of the century at the time. Levin was a contemporary of the accused, and based this novel on his experience of following the real case.

Some of the most interesting aspects of the novel involve the Chicago Jewish community’s reaction to the crime. The community demanded justice, but there was a lot of fear of anti-Semitic backlash. I suspect that is why a new publisher of Jewish fiction, Fig Tree, has chosen this as its first release.

As a novel, this work feels like the works of Grisham and Turow– most of it is courtroom thriller. Although I felt that the book was drawn out longer than it needed to be, it is a compelling account, and I can see why it is considered a classic.

Libraries, especially in communities with large Jewish populations, will find this book essential. I am interested to see what this publisher does next. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by David Agranoff