What do You think about Ties That Bind (2003)?
Amanda Jaffe, an up and coming criminal defense lawyer in Portland, is still battling demons caused by PTSD. A year earlier she had been kidnapped and abused by a sociopath but managed to escape. She is determined to get her life back on track but seeing crime scene photos of a badly ravaged and bloated woman on the beach sends her into shock. She's worried she will never get over her trauma.Tim Kerrigan, a prosecutor in Portland, is a married man with a young daughter whom he adores. No one knows of the degrading sex he has with prostitutes, something that if exposed will cost him his job, his marriage and his daughter. A former Heisman trophy winner, he battles with feelings of inadequacy and fear of exposure.Amanda and Tim are on opposite sides of a legal drama involving Jon Dupre and the murder of a senator. The case appears to be cut and dried but appearances are often deceiving.This story is intricately woven, with solid characterizations and intriguing twists and turns.
—Susan Ashcraft
In Phillip Margolin's Ties that Bind, the 3rd book in the Amanda Jaffe legal thriller series, it packed a big punch of surprises on both sides of the spectrum. Murder, intrigue, politics, it was all in there. Amanda Jaffe survived the Cardoni attack, a while back, while it left her traumatized and avoiding the limelight. That was until she took on the case on Jon Dupre, who ran an upscale call girl service, and was accused of murdering the US senator. But he had proof of the existence of a secret society of men in politics who were bonded as brothers with a political right of passage. But that's when she was pressured to walk away from the case, she didn't want to give in to threats to investigate the issue more, while she put her loved ones in danger to find out the truth.
—Kristen
11/3/10 -- I don't read as many thrillers as I used to, but it seems like when I do read one these days, it ends up being an abridged audio, which is not always the best choice I don't think. This one moved too fast for me. I think the storyline was decent, but I would've followed it better had it not been abridged. I found myself having a little trouble keeping track of who was who & while there were a few plot twists in this one, they seemed pretty abrupt. As for the audio itself, I didn't care so much for the reader in this one. Her normal reading voice was fine, but when she tried to assume the different voices of the characters, I found that quite annoying.
—Coleen
