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Overview
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, hanging from a doorway in a gruesome tableau.
For Stella Marz, the search for Jack Novak's killer leads into another bizarre homicide case, back through her own past and through the city where she was born and where now—a good Catholic girl turned career woman—she is in crisis. Somewhere in this city a hidden alliance of big money, big plans, and dark secrets is fueling a great American revival. And somehow Stella Marz will bring the darkness into the light—no matter what it reveals, no matter who it destroys. . . .
Synopsis
In Steelton, a newly revitalized city, two prominent men are found dead. One, Tommy Fielding, a senior officer of a company building a new baseball stadium appears to have died from an accidental overdose of heroin. The other, Jack Novak, the local drug dealers' attorney is 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? The question falls to Assistant County Prosecutor Stella Marz, called the Dark Lady by defense lawyers for her relentless, sometimes ruthless style. Making her way through a maze of corruption, deceit, and greed, trusting no one, Stella comes to believe that the search for the truth involves the bleak history of Steelton itself - a history that now endangers her future, and perhaps her life.
USA Today - Deirdre Donahue
Stella makes Dark Lady shine.
Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
The Barnes & Noble ReviewTwo very different figures dominate the landscape of Richard North Patterson's latest — and grimmest — political/legal thriller, Dark Lady. One is Stella Marz, an ambitious, driven deputy prosecutor with a troubled past, an unsatisfactory personal life, and nascent political aspirations. The other — itself virtually a character in the novel — is the fictional city of Steelton, an emblematic American community with a full complement of contemporary social ills: crime, drug abuse, racial tensions, economic difficulties, and deep-seated, endemic corruption.
As the novel opens, Steelton is in the midst of an election year. Stella, the Dark Lady of the title, is hoping to use her pristine professional record — she has not lost a case in more than six years — to transform herself into a viable candidate for chief prosecutor of Erie County. To succeed — to become the first female prosecutor in the county's history — she must secure the support of current Chief Prosecutor Arthur Bright, who is himself hoping to become the first black mayor in the city's history, and who is waging an uphill campaign against a solidly entrenched incumbent, Thomas Krajek.
The central issue of the mayoral campaign — the issue around which virtually everything that happens in this novel ultimately revolves — concerns the construction of a $275 million baseball stadium, a project that is universally referred to as "Steelton 2000." The issue that divides the candidates is fundamental. Is Steelton 2000, as Krajek claims, the tangible symbol of a new erainSteelton history, a source of jobs, taxes, and economic opportunities? Or does it represent another kind of symbol: of greed, profiteering, and political and corporate malfeasance? Stella herself wants very much to believe that the new stadium will provide the key to the revitalization of Steelton. Unfortunately, her investigation into a pair of seemingly unrelated murders — murders that stand at the heart of Dark Lady's convoluted plot — leads her to an inescapable conclusion: that the entire project has been compromised by the corrupt ambitions of its own central supporters.
The first of the two murder victims is Tommy Fielding, project manager for Steelton 2000. Fielding, together with a prostitute and long-term drug addict named Tina Welsh, is found dead of a massive heroin overdose. The circumstances of his death are so radically out of character that no one who knew him can accept them at face value. The second murder victim is Jack Novak, a lawyer who built a lucrative career defending the interests of Steelton's leading drug dealers. Novak — who, many years before, had been Stella Marz's lover — is found castrated and hanging from a clothes hook in his own bedroom, in a grotesque parody of the rituals of autoerotic asphyxiation.
Stella's investigation reveals unexpected connections between these two deaths. As she unearths the details of Jack Novak's corrupt, increasingly decadent career — a process that revives some painful personal memories of her own — she follows a convoluted paper trail that leads, in time, from Jack Novak to Steelton 2000, and from Steelton 2000 to the shadowy domain of Vincent Moro, who has dominated the criminal underworld of Steelton for more than a generation. Along the way, she uncovers another series of unexpected connections that implicate a number of the city's leading citizens, all of whom are caught up, willingly or not, in an elaborate, long-term scheme that centers around a single enormous question: Who will control the economic future of Steelton?
Patterson, it must be said, is not an elegant stylist. He writes what might be termed a lawyer's prose: brisk, efficient, frequently lacking in subtlety or nuance. But there is a cumulative, Dreiser-like power in this novel that is difficult to ignore, a power that has its basis in Patterson's thorough, practical understanding of the machinery of urban politics; in his detailed, highly convincing sense of place; and in his clear-eyed view of the various temptations — sexual, financial, political — that complicate the lives of so many of his characters. The result is a novel that gradually, inexorably asserts its hold on us and leaves a bitter but unmistakable aftertaste behind.
—Bill Sheehan
Deirdre Donahue
Stella makes Dark Lady shine.— USA Today
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 on--in 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. Simultaneous release with the Knopf hardcover. Also available unabridged and on CD. (Sept.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Library Journal
Patterson (No Safe Place) deftly combines his knack for spellbinding legal drama and his recent interest in the world of politics. Stella Marz is the assistant county prosecutor in a struggling Midwestern city. Her boss is running for mayor, and Stella hopes to be elected to his job. First, however, she must investigate the deaths of two prominent men--the project manager for the construction of a new baseball stadium and the city's leading defender of drug cases. Neither is clearly murder, but the circumstances are horrific and unusual, involving heroin and kinky sex. Stella's investigation quickly becomes a factor in the mayoral race, and the candidates, their backers, and other ambitious county employees all play roles in Stella's progress. The deeper she goes, the more signs of corruption she finds, and the less she can trust her friends, her co-workers, and even herself. As in all of Patterson's books, the plot's twists and turns build to an unexpected conclusion. Patterson has peopled this very believable novel with fascinating characters, and his understanding of political subtleties is superb. Highly recommended. [Literary Guild main selection.]--Katherine E.A. Sorci, IIT Research Inst., Annapolis, MD Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.Entertainment Weekly
Kinky sex, multiple murders, soap opera, city politics—a sturdy frame, as good and as potentially dramatic as anything Patterson has given us before. Yet once the premise and all of the players are in position, things turn clunky, then fall apart. Bad enough that the prose is cliched and the dialogue flavorless, but you quickly get a sinking feeling that the author is just going through the motions, narrating without any passion for his material, or even much interest. And heck, if he doesn't believe what he's saying, why should we?...Give Patterson this: Despite all the tired hookum this time, and a finale that lumbers along for nearly a hundred pages, he doesn't fudge when it comes to his novel's undergirding facts. Dark Lady is at its best during its frequent, if long-winded, tutorials on the poli-sci of stadium building. But that's not enough to keep those of us outside the construction industry glued to the page.
—September 3, 1999