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Valerie J. Brooks
Author, Contributor
Revenge in 3 Parts
She fought for justice. Now she seeks revenge. In this gripping psychological thriller and debut noir that takes the reader from Paris to Portland, Oregon, and finally to Kauai, criminal attorney Angeline Porter thrives on crime—righting wrongs, fighting for justice, putting away murderers. But after rebuking the sexual advances of the head of her firm—plus putting away his friend, a serial rapist—Angeline is disbarred. When Angeline’s beautiful, but troubled sister Sophie commits suicide, she seeks to right the myriad of injustices that provoked her sister and acts to avenge her death. This time she’s forced to fight crime outside the law and travels to Paris to punish the man responsible. Back home, guilt for not protecting Sophie drives Angeline to investigate, and after discovering Sophie had a secret life, Ang knows she’s in danger. She will lose everything, including her husband, as she battles an FBI agent, a stalker, an international crime extortionist racket, and an obsessively friendly neighbor. To maintain her grip on reality, she drinks and pops meds in order to battle secretive, powerful forces that will do anything to stay on top. Taut and intense with heart-pumping twists, Revenge in 3 Parts uses classic noir language laced with modern tropes—a hacker named Snoop, the Ashley Madison dating site, and Snapchat—and burns with contemporary femmes-noir energy creating a new crime genre and heroine for a disturbed modern age.
Reviews
Kirkus Reviews

“A former criminal lawyer, seeking vengeance against the man she believes is responsible for her sister’s suicide, gets entangled with dangerous culprits in this thriller.

Oregonian Angeline Porter is visiting Paris, but she’s not there for sightseeing or romance. The ex-attorney is hunting Gerard Duvernet, the married Frenchman who had an affair with her sister, Sophie. She blames him for Sophie’s tragic decision to kill herself as well as the unborn child Angeline assumes was Gerard’s. Under the pretense that she’s journalist Helen Craig, Angeline plans to murder him with poison, but the charismatic Frenchman isn’t the monster she anticipated. Moreover, after finally deciphering Sophie’s laptop and cellphone passcodes, she discovers startling new information that could change everything.

Back home, Angeline’s chemical engineer husband, Hank, suffers a debilitating injury. To cover the costly treatment, Angeline goes to great, potentially immoral lengths. Unfortunately, certain individuals linked to Sophie and Gerard eventually track her down, thinking she, for starters, has access to a sizable bank account. Before long, Angeline finds herself immersed in a whirlwind of deceit, theft, blackmail, and worse. Murder may soon even prove a necessity, though not out of a sense of retribution, but rather mere self-preservation.

Brooks’ (A Killing in Kauai, 2018, etc.) book, compiling a trilogy of preceding novellas featuring Angeline, is filled with genuinely surprising plot turns. What’s on Sophie’s cellphone, for example, takes the story in an entirely new direction. But it’s the protagonist who will astonish readers the most. Angeline is ethically ambivalent: A rapist client at her old law firm receives due punishment courtesy of her illicit deed. She nevertheless remains appealing throughout, as she readily acknowledges her flaws. Bolstering those traits is Angeline’s frank and distinctive first-person narration: “Somehow, I’ve now turned into an observer of my life, the emotions sitting deep inside me like a vault.” The work concludes with an exposition-heavy wrap-up that’s likewise absorbing and logically sound.

A zigzagging tale reinforced by a striking and complicated protagonist.”

Wendy Kendall, Kendall & Cooper Talk Mysteries Podcast

“The author treats you to a strong intelligent, gutsy woman who writes her own rules and throws herself into a dangerous situation of her own creation. As has been said, ‘well-behaved women seldom make history’—or good novels.”

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