An engaging dive into politics and scandal
‘A Certain Man’s Daughter’ is Norfolk author’s third novel
A principled lawyer breaks all the rules and becomes a murder target while investigating the blackmail of an old classmate, and former lover, in novelist Timothy J. Lockhart’s scintillating new crime tale.
Lockhart, a lawyer in Norfolk whose previous taut, gritty thrillers, “Smith” and “Pirates,” made an indelible impression on critics — with Booklist relishing his “edgy suspense and artfully done violence” — this time takes a discerning look at salacious, cutthroat political treachery.
That old lover, Lisa Lindstrom, is now a rich, glamorous senator’s daughter married to a powerful tech industry
CEO. She’s a formidable Senate committee staffer poised to run for the Senate as her father retires. Her political career and marriage are threatened when a steamy videotape exposing a sexual indiscretion with a go-go dancer turns up in her mailbox, along with a blackmail note. Keen to avoid public scandal and cautious about involving the police, Lisa enlists the services of lawyer Robert Shipley, whom she dated while they were law students.
The loyal and morally decent Shipley, presented as a unique species in his profession, is persuaded to ferret out the extortionist. He has only four days before the culprit hands the scandalous footage to the media. Shipley, though, is the resourceful kind who lets nothing get in his way. He examines those with a connection to his client and her female partner, discovering far more than he bargained for and putting in jeopardy his life and those of his loved ones.
Adeptly plotted and consistently engaging, “A Certain Man’s Daughter” is another noteworthy addition to Lockhart’s impressive canon of work.
Nicholas Litchfield is editor of Lowestoft Chronicle and author of the suspense novel “Swampjack Virus.” Formerly a syndicated book critic for the Lancashire
Post, he writes for Publishers Weekly and the Colorado Review.
(Erica Smith, books pages editor for The Pilot and Daily Press, edited an early version of this novel.)