Two Lost Boys

Veteran attorney Janet Moodie, the sympathetic lead of Robertson’s promising first novel, has withdrawn to a small, isolated Sonoma County, Calif., community after the shocking and inexplicable suicide of her husband, prominent defense counsel Terrence Moran. Though Janet has decided not to handle any more death penalty cases, she accepts one after finding the lack of stress in her life boring. Her newest client, Andy Hardy, is on death row in San Quentin State Prison for murdering two prostitutes, whom he and his brother, Emory, abducted and abused. Janet has to review the record to find evidence that Andy’s trial attorney didn’t provide him with competent representation 15 years earlier, as well as uncover any new evidence that could lead to his sentence being commuted. Though the resolution doesn’t live up to the rest of the book, Robertson, an appellate lawyer specializing in death penalty cases, does a fine job basing a legal thriller on the process of trying to mitigate a death sentence. (May)