Helpful Score: 4
excellect political tale that leaves you questions to ponder.
Helpful Score: 4
Very exciting book -- lots of twists and turns -- thriller to the end.
Helpful Score: 3
This crime story is set in a fictional Midwestern town on the shores of Lakr Erie. The construction of a baseball stadium threatens to be the towns downfall. A very gruesome murder occurs and the scenes are very graphic and realistic. This thriller has greed, corruption and a lot of double-dealing along with back-stabbing. If you are not easily offended by violence and sex.....you will find the spell binding drama very intertaining!
Helpful Score: 3
A good read
Helpful Score: 2
Patterson's Dark Lady spins a web that keeps you guessing what next. Very well written
Helpful Score: 2
Am not a big fan of this genre, but really enjoyed this one.
Helpful Score: 2
Book had many characters with complex relationships. It was difficult to read but good.
Helpful Score: 2
I really like the way this author writes. This one was a real page turner, stay up all night kind of book.
Helpful Score: 1
This is an absorbing book about political ambition and about how much one woman can hold on to her belief that there are no grey areas. Something is either the right thing to do, or not. How in a corrupted system can she survive believing as she does, and how can she deal with those who are willing to bend and/or simply break the rules of moral conduct. I found this to be an exceptional story that held my interest throughly. GinaK
Stella Marz is searching for a killer which leads into another bizarre homicide case back through her own past. Marz is a memorable lady.
From Publishers Weekly
Patterson's signature style of crime suspense depends heavily on the terse descriptive passages he uses to render settings and characters. This makes his work adapt especially well to audio, since the listener is constantly being told exactly what's going onAin adjective-laden language that has modern-day colorings of film noir and Raymond Chandler. (Accordingly, all eight of Patterson's previous novels are also available from Random House AudioBooks). Stella Marz is a politically ambitious Assistant County Prosecutor in Steelton, an American rust-belt city plagued by unemployment, racial division and rampant local corruption. Young, beautiful and forthright, Stella has earned the nickname "Dark Lady" as a ruthless law-woman. But she meets her match when she's assigned to investigate the grisly murder of her own ex-lover, an attorney for the town's drug dealers. Along the way, plenty of sordid sexual and violent acts are detailed, making for a sustained mood of grimy titillation. Kalember's (of TV's Sisters and thirtysomething) reading is crisply enunciated and tactfully understated.
Patterson's signature style of crime suspense depends heavily on the terse descriptive passages he uses to render settings and characters. This makes his work adapt especially well to audio, since the listener is constantly being told exactly what's going onAin adjective-laden language that has modern-day colorings of film noir and Raymond Chandler. (Accordingly, all eight of Patterson's previous novels are also available from Random House AudioBooks). Stella Marz is a politically ambitious Assistant County Prosecutor in Steelton, an American rust-belt city plagued by unemployment, racial division and rampant local corruption. Young, beautiful and forthright, Stella has earned the nickname "Dark Lady" as a ruthless law-woman. But she meets her match when she's assigned to investigate the grisly murder of her own ex-lover, an attorney for the town's drug dealers. Along the way, plenty of sordid sexual and violent acts are detailed, making for a sustained mood of grimy titillation. Kalember's (of TV's Sisters and thirtysomething) reading is crisply enunciated and tactfully understated.
I enjoy a good book like most folks. What I don't enjoy is being made to feel illiterate, undereducated and generally stupid when I invest my time in leisurely reading. If those things do not bother you or you are just curious then go ahead and read Dark Lady. It will reference words few folks use in real sentences and plays and historical literature that ivy league school professors toss around to make themselves feel more important.
Early on the average reader can deduce the guilty. The fascinating part of the story is the intricate weaving the author uses to pull together all of his characters. However, the author tried so hard to make his story seedy and gritty that even for the time period in which the story was set the racial stereotypes are completely over the top. To cover for this the author even had the web of racism be central to each of the characters inner demons. But what did not work to me is that the stereotypes were so cliche' that maybe it exposes something about the writers perception of what racism is to himself.
I'm sad to say that each of the surprise and shocking moments read like something that has been written about time and again. Maybe someone can invent some newer and more lewd sex activities to make us shocked again. Maybe it is true that between just plain living, TV and Movies there are too few surprises that are left to be written about when it comes to trying to describe depraved individuals.
Otherwise the story is ok if you want to feel like a dark cloud is lingering nearby and following you along everyday and you care about a heroine that has the personality of a sock in a rock.
Early on the average reader can deduce the guilty. The fascinating part of the story is the intricate weaving the author uses to pull together all of his characters. However, the author tried so hard to make his story seedy and gritty that even for the time period in which the story was set the racial stereotypes are completely over the top. To cover for this the author even had the web of racism be central to each of the characters inner demons. But what did not work to me is that the stereotypes were so cliche' that maybe it exposes something about the writers perception of what racism is to himself.
I'm sad to say that each of the surprise and shocking moments read like something that has been written about time and again. Maybe someone can invent some newer and more lewd sex activities to make us shocked again. Maybe it is true that between just plain living, TV and Movies there are too few surprises that are left to be written about when it comes to trying to describe depraved individuals.
Otherwise the story is ok if you want to feel like a dark cloud is lingering nearby and following you along everyday and you care about a heroine that has the personality of a sock in a rock.
This is one of those books that I laid down several times and had to just keep plugging away at it to finish it. I found myself not really understanding the plot...maybe because the book moved so slow or I had difficulty connecting the different characters.
Slow start but overall a good story.
Great Mystery for those into twists and turns in a plot.
Has everything from a murdered lady of the evening, to
drug smuggleing. Hope you like it as much as I did.
I wish you well
beca
Has everything from a murdered lady of the evening, to
drug smuggleing. Hope you like it as much as I did.
I wish you well
beca
from the jacket: In Steelton, a struggling Midwestern city on the cusp of an economic turnaround, two prominent men are found dead within days of each other. One is Tommy Fielding, a senior officer of the company building a new baseball stadium, the city's hope for the future. The other is Jack Novak, the local drug dealers' attorney of choice. Fielding's death with a postitute, from an overdose of heroin, seems accidental; Novak is apparently the victim of a ritual murder. But in each case the character of the dead man seems contradicted by the particulars of his death. Coincidence or connection?
Once the prosecutor was a young law student.Once the dead man was an honest lawyer.Stella Marz searchs for Jack Novak's killer.
Once the prosecutor was a young law student.Once the dead man was an honest lawyer. Now Stella Martz stares at the body of her former lover, hanging from a doorway in a gruesome tableau.
For Stella Martz, the search for Jack Novak's killer leads into another bizarre homicide case, back through her own past and where she was born and where now- a good C
...atholic girl turned career woman- she is in exile. Somewhere in this city an unholy alliance of big money, big plans,and dark secrets is fueling a great American revval. And somehow Stella Martz will bring the darkness into the light-no matter what it reveals, no matter who it destroys...
For Stella Martz, the search for Jack Novak's killer leads into another bizarre homicide case, back through her own past and where she was born and where now- a good C
...atholic girl turned career woman- she is in exile. Somewhere in this city an unholy alliance of big money, big plans,and dark secrets is fueling a great American revval. And somehow Stella Martz will bring the darkness into the light-no matter what it reveals, no matter who it destroys...
No longer a young law student...Stella must solve the murder of her former lover..who was once a very honest lawyer himself.
a drudge - didn't like
Once the prosecutor was a young law student. Once the dead man was an honest lawyer. Now Stella Marz stares at the body of her former lover, hangng from a doorway in a gruesome tableau.
No dust jacket on this copy
