Synopses & Reviews
Watch your back most
carefully when someone you
trust steps behind you.
Even after Hugh Freyl lost his sight he was invincible. But late one night, in the library of the elite law firm that bears his name, he was beaten to death.
The obvious suspect is David Marion, a convicted killer from the inner city. Hugh, the scion of the richest and most influential family in Springfield, Illinois, had orchestrated David's release from prison and outraged his family and friends by making the young man his protege. Now, in the eyes of Hugh's circle, David's criminal past fits him perfectly for the murderer's role. It makes no sense for David to have killed his teacher, liberator and friend. Yet, if he did not, who did?
With no one to stand up for him, and armed only with the criminal skills he honed in prison and the savage fury of a cornered man, David must fight alone. But is he battling to prove his innocence or to hide his guilt?
In Springfield nothing is what it seems, and the more David struggles to clear himself, the closer he gets to the snake pit of ambition and greed poisoning the social and political fabric of the city. Was Hugh all he appeared to be? Who was he protecting and why? Could this most upright of men have involved his firm in shady financial dealings? To find the answers, David must confront his violent past and the uncertainty of his future.
Unraveling with startling reversals and visceral detail and as mesmerizing as the work of Scott Turow, Bleedout is a tense, psychological tour de force. It is charged with insights into betrayal and jealousy so stark that they call into question the values and presumptions by which we judge others guilty andourselves innocent.
Review
"A gripping page-turner...psychologically insightful and deeply moving." -- Jeffery Deaver
Review
"A tense, dense, spiraling story...spellbinding...a master class in suspense." -- Val McDermid, author of The Distant Echo
Review
"Like Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent, this is much more than a can't-put-it-down thriller." -- Library Journal, starred review
Synopsis
In the tradition of Scott Turow and Stephen L. Carter comes a mesmerizing and suspenseful novel that is also an affecting observation of contemporary social mores. "Bleedout" confirms Joan Brady's outstanding literary reputation as a master of imaginative and entertaining fiction.
Synopsis
BLEEDOUT is a page-turning thriller by award-winning author Joan Brady about a family torn apart by a violent death and the secrets it exposes.
Synopsis
Joan Brady's "action-packed, densely woven" (
Publishers Weekly) novel is an ingeniously layered psychological thriller about a family corrupted by a violent death and the shadow of a complicated friendship.
The victim : An invincible attorney.
Hugh Freyl, the scion of the richest and most influential family in Springfield, Illinois, is found beaten to death in the library of his own law firm.
The suspect : A convicted killer.
David Marion, a young man from the inner city, is on parole. It was Freyl who, to the outrage of colleagues, family, and friends, orchestrated his release from prison. And it was Freyl who took David in as his protégé, giving him a second chance at life. Were Freyl's critics right to suspect David's murderous nature all along? Or was Freyl, a blind man who could always see the truth in others, not all he appeared to be? As David fights to prove his innocence, a twisted world of darkness and deception unfolds.
About the Author
Joan Brady was born in California and danced with New York City Ballet when she was in her twenties. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Columbia University, Brady now lives in England where she is an author of short stories; articles; reviews; a highly acclaimed autobiography, The Unmaking of a Dancer, and a novel, Theory of War, for which she became the first woman (and first American) to win the Whitbreak Book of the Year Award in 1993. She is also the author of the best-selling novel, The ÉmigrÉ, and Death Comes for Peter Pan, a fictionalized account of an American medical scandal, both published in the U.K. In 2001, she represented England at the Centenary of the Nobel Peace Prize. Brady published her first book with Simon & Schuster in 2005, titled Bleedout, in hardover and mass market paperback reprint.