The Guilty Die Twice
By Don Hartshorn
A 2020 release from
TCK Publishing
An emotional, intense, persistent battle between attorneys
who are brothers. Jake Lynch is the fictional District Attorney in Austin,
Texas. His younger brother, Travis, also an attorney, struggles to make ends
meet as the novel opens. Texas is a capital punishment state and part of the
novel deals forcefully and thoughtfully with that issue.
The story is not, however a sociological or psychological treatise
on the rights and wrongs nor on the social implications of an existing approach
to capital murder. This is a bare-knuckle, stirring confrontation between
opposing points of view in the persons of Travis and Jake.
The well written narrative switches between a decades old
execution of a truly evil and unrepentant character and the truly awful results
of the penetration of the modern drug culture into every aspect of Austin’s
society. And while the well-defined characters raise several important tragic
issues in the investigations and trials of some of the characters, the pace of
the novel drives the narrative in relentless fashion through personal,
political and even racial aspects.
Readers can ignore the sociological aspects and read the
novel as a fine fascinating adventure. Or one could use the story as the basis
for thoughtful debate. Either way, I recommend the novel without reservation.
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