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Twelve-year-old Billy Straight—precocious, heartbreakingly perceptive, relentlessly moral—has fled the chaos and abuse of his life at home and is fighting to survive on L.A.'s meanest streets. All alone, Billy has fashioned a precarious existence for himself, using principled tricks to nourish his body and his mind. Late one night he watches from his hiding place as a man viciously butchers a woman. The victim turns out to be the ex-wife of a television celebrity with a history of domestic violence, and Billy becomes the center of terrifying attention—from the media, from violent bounty hunters, and from the murderer himself. As he runs for his life, relying on his native wit and instincts for survival, Billy is also tracked by a potential savior: Petra Connor, a tough, gifted, beautiful LAPD homicide detective with a past of her own.
Breathtakingly paced, Billy Straight brings to life one street kid's efforts to survive in the face of unspeakable evil. Richly layered, emotionally compelling, and peopled by a vivid cast of supporting characters—including Alex Delaware himself in a strong cameo role—this gripping novel represents one of the century's great story-tellers at the top of his form.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
August 3, 2021 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780593559543
- File size: 436603 KB
- Duration: 15:09:35
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Apparently, Alexander Adams can be counted on for a solid dramatic presentation that amplifies the original material but never over-shadows it. This holds true for his reading of Jonathan Kellerman's latest thriller about a celebrity murder case and the 12-year-old runaway who holds the key to its solution. Listening to Adams's thoughtful interpretations of Detective Petra Connor, young and homeless Billy Straight, and the various suspects that populate this involving police procedural, it's clear why his readings are on the increase. This is a solid thriller that, in his understated way, Adams makes even better. J.P.M. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine -
Starred review from November 30, 1998
Although this is only the second of Kellerman's 14 novels not to feature psychologist Dr. Alex Delaware (the first was Butcher's Theater, 1988), it has all the author's familiar strengths: a broad cast of well-defined characters, a fast-moving plot and themes sponged from the daily news yet turned fresh. (And Delaware makes a brief appearance at the end.) Twelve-year-old Billy Straight, a precocious homeless kid with a taste for reading, flees Los Angeles in terror after witnessing a murder in Griffith Park. The homicide inquiry is headed by Petra Connor, a determined, intuitive detective, and her partner, Stu Bishop, who is distracted by a family tragedy. The murder victim turns out to be Lisa Ramsey, ex-wife of the famous, and abusive, Cart Ramsey, who plays a private eye on a late-night television series. Kellerman does a fine job revealing how memories of the Simpson case shadow the Ramsey investigation, affecting the ways Petra and Stu are allowed to go about their work. The search for Billy by the cops and several villains forces a comparison with John Grisham's The Client, but Kellerman's novel is far more complex, switching points of view among a multitude of characters and amid a series of distinctive subplots. By the dramatic climax, Kellerman has pushed a number of familiar buttons--but with enough panache and surprises to satisfy his most demanding fans.
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