Reviewing William Bernhardt's "Capitol Offense" is not an easy task. This mystery/court drama has so many utterly moronic features that a one-star rating would be overly generous. Yet, it is not completely devoid of interesting stuff. For instance, the opening sentence, "I died three days ago", is pretty neat.A female doctor in Oklahoma disappears, after having a car accident in a remote area. Her husband tries to have the police look for her, but for seven days he is unable to convince a detective to issue an APB or even to begin a search. After his wife is finally found, too late to be saved, he apparently has plans to kill the detective who indirectly caused her death and consults Ben Kincaid, a senator and a successful lawyer, to arrange a pardon for him for the murder. The whole premise is so idiotic that I was almost ready to stop reading the book, which I almost never do (I have not finished only two books in the last 20 years). While the author's writing is occasionally so bad that I enjoyed it for entertainment purposes, the court drama part is quite interesting and competently written. Plausibility of the denouement is rather feeble. I enjoyed one passage: "People might not be willing to admit to extreme, even uncontrollable emotions with regard to their spouses. But a kitty was a different thing altogether.""Capitol Offense" is quite a readable book, but in a wrong way. One wants to turn the pages, without reading them, just to learn the ending.One and a half stars. I have read one other novel by William Bernhardt - a number of years ago - that I thought dragged a bit and was only so-so. I found this book, therefore, to be a delightful surprise. A good story, a murder mystery, which might or might not be quite so mysterious in terms of who done it - with a surprising amount of humor along the way. Dennis Thomas is accused of murdering a policeman whose inaction caused the death of Thomas' wife. His defense is a temporary insanity plea - a difficult defense to win.
What do You think about Capitol Offense (2009)?
Ben Kincaid series #17 ~~~ read more of his
—jennramos101
