Fiction, Fiction Subjects

Mitigating Circumstances

Name: Mitigating Circumstances
Author: Nancy Taylor Rosenberg
ISBN: 9781440151071

by Nancy Taylor Rosenberg

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Overview

Readers will want to rediscover the book that introduced attorney Lily Forrester. As the new Chief of the Sex Crimes Division, Lily is a champion of the modern legal system-until a brutal attack against her teenaged daughter and herself forces Lily to take the law into her own hands....

Praise for Mitigating Circumstances:

"Better than Scott Turrow."-Nelson DeMille

"Adrenaline-pumped...No woman has ever had a stronger motive for vengeance than Lily Forrester." -New York Times Book Review

"Unstoppable...Presumed Innocent crossed with Thelma and Louise."-Glamour

The hardcover national bestseller by a former police woman and criminal investigator. Rosenberg has created a gutsy and sympathetic heroine in prosecutor Lily Forrester, and her breathtaking plot involves rape, murder, passion, betrayal, vengeance and the legal system.

Synopsis

Publishers Weekly

Unflinchingly brutal, this compulsively readable first novel grapples with ethically and psychologically insoluble issues. When California assistant DA Lily Forrester gets promoted to chief of the sex-crimes unit and finally separates from her weak husband, she sees the way clear to find new love and eventually achieves her goal of becoming a judge. Then a man bursts into her new house and forces her to watch as he rapes her daughter. Immediately afterward, Lily discovers his mug shot and address among some case files she has brought home; now she must choose between delivering the criminal to uncertain justice in court or avenging her child directly at the cost of the principles she has sworn to uphold. Addressing the subtleties of a personal tragedy within an intricate suspense format, former policewoman Rosenberg has crafted an assured novel firmly grounded in scenes of everyday life. It's possible to have retrospective qualms about the many plot convolutions, which seem designed only to give a beautiful redhead an airtight reason to kill an unknown Hispanic, but Rosenberg's overwhelming portrayal of the incendiary, universal emotions of vengeance and guilt definitely touch a raw nerve. Literary Guild main selection; film rights to Tri-Star; ad/promo; author tour. ( Jan .)

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Library Journal

Former policewoman Rosenberg has certainly hit the target with her women's action thriller. Protagonist Lily Forrester, a district attorney in Southern California, is an ambitious woman with a deteriorating marriage. Her life becomes a nightmare when both she and her daughter are brutally attacked. Recognizing their attacker, but unwilling to submit her child to the abuse of the legal system, Forrester moves to deal out justice herself. First novelist Rosenberg offers a compelling insider's view of the criminal justice system and a moving portrait of a woman bent on revenge. Book club and movie rights for this page-turner have already been sold, so expect the high demand it deserves. Literary Guild main selection.-- Sister M. Anna Falbo CSSF, Villa Maria Coll. Lib., Buffalo, N.Y.

Kirkus Reviews

A former cop's page-burning tale of a rape victim's vengeance that offers thrills and emotionalism aplenty—as well as the most cleverly calculated defense of vigilantism since Brian Garfield's Death Wish of 20 years ago. The rape, which comes early here, is as shocking as any in fiction, detailed in graphic slow-motion prose as heroine Lily Forrester is sodomized at knifepoint by a young Hispanic. What will make readers really cringe, though, is that Lily's 13-year-old daughter, Shana, is raped alongside her mom. The kicker is that Lily is an assistant D.A. (of the fictional city of Oxnard, California); but despite her fierce allegiance to the law, right after the rape, Lily, flush with rage, i.d.'s the rapist, blows him away, then covers her tracks: She alone knows that the man shot dead by an unknown assailant raped her and her daughter. Though first-novelist Rosenberg uses a steam shovel to stack readers' sympathies toward Lily—subplots reveal that the rapist had killed twice before, and that, as a child, Lily had been raped repeatedly by her grandfather—the author offers a convincingly complex portrait of the aftermath of the crimes: of Shana's shattered world, and of Lily's breakdown as she's ravaged by guilt yet terrified of being caught. The tension escalates as Oxnard's best detective catches the case, and it goes over the top when a lineup of suspects corralled by the cops reveals that Lily may have killed the wrong man. Will Lily be found out, and, even if not, will she be able to live with her terrible remorse? Suffice it to say that Rosenberg punches all the right buttons to create a climax awash in rousing moral righteousness; but readers—andthis first novel will have many—may note to their discomfort that, ultimately, Lily really isn't much more than Charles Bronson in a designer dress. (Film rights to Tri-Star; Literary Guild Main Selection for May)