Book Review – Bear Is Broken

Bear Is Broken by Laclan Smith (2013) – Leo Maxwell lives in the shadow of his older brother Danny, the most successful and possibly most hated defense attorney in the San Francisco area, and his father, currently serving a life sentence for the murder of  their mother.  In both cases he both loves and hates what passes for his family.  When Danny is murdered Leo will have to step out of his role as “Monkey Boy” and try to solve mysteries that suddenly make up his life.

I’ll give Smith this – I’ve read much worse debut novels.   In fact I’ve read third and fourth novels by authors that don’t build a story as well as he has here.  The problem is that once the story is built he seems to lose track of what he is supposed to be doing with it.  We follow Leo along as he is very quickly in over his head with the police, with his brother’s ex-wife (on whom little brother once had a fairish sized crush), the wealthy young heiress, her brother, mother and father, plus various former clients of Danny’s.  For me the problem is that Leo never seems to rise above the confusion.  He flip flops between possible suspects without ever really nailing down any one candidate till the answer falls into his lap.

Leo never truly stands up for himself, never seems to come up with any kind of plan and manages to get played by just about everyone at least once.  When he thinks he’s playing other people the impression I got mostly was befuddlement from the others as they just stare dumbfounded as he fumbles along.

This book is listed as the first of a series.  I didn’t see anything that particularly inspires me to follow along with Leo’s adventures.  Mostly I just wanted to give “Monkey Boy” a swat upside his head.  At the same time the books not a bad read.  So it’s possible I could be tempted to check out something else by Lachlan Smith.

Rating – ***  Worth A Look