Publishers Weekly
amazon.com
Boulder Camera
Publishing News
Library Journal
Kirkus Review
Midwest Book Review
Colorado Springs Gazette
Independent News- Auckland
San Diego Union-Tribune
Toronto Globe & Mail
Toronto Star

     When I was reading Boulder author Marianne Wesson’s first novel, "Render up the Body," last year, I lent a copy to my mother, who was visiting for the summer.
      Bad move. I didn’t get the book back until Mom had finished it. And when she did, she followed me around the house for a week saying, "Haven’t you finished the book yet? You won’t believe the ending."
      In her new follow-up novel, we see how much Wesson has grown as a writer. "A Suggestion of Death" is a gem among the plethora of modern legal thrillers: a gripping story that touches on hot topics, including repressed memories, citizen militias and the limits of the law.
      It is a book with an intriguing plot, featuring the cast of Boulder characters we got to know so well in Wesson’s debut: Cinda Hayes, the sometimes-lonely, sometimes-bewildered defense attorney with a big heart, and her law partner, Tory Meadows. The two have set up shop in the Pearl Street law offices of African-American attorney Sam Holt. But Holt, Cinda’s lover, has moved to New York City, unwilling to deal with the scrutiny of being the designated representative of his race in Boulder.
      The story gets going when a troubled young woman named Mariah McKay phones Cinda while she is on a call-in radio show trying to drum up business for her cash-strapped office. Mariah is the daughter of Harrison McKay, a CU professor who is running for the state Senate (his motto: "Whether or not you’re for him, he’s for you"). Mariah, suffering from eating disorders, is bothered by nascent memories involving her father, a string of lights and a pair of white legs. . . 
    There is a new, powerful character this time around in Pike Sayers, a sensitive, rugged, common-law judge who is central to resolving the mystery of the white legs. Cinda and Sayers come together and move apart as the story progresses, and part of the appeal of "A Suggestion of Death" is watching Cinda’s response to cowboy-boot-wearing Sayers.
      Also back in "A Suggestion of Death" is Boulder, as much a character as Cinda and Tory. Locals will get a kick out of reading about "E-Town," the Trident Cafe, the Downtown Mall, Penny Lane, Sugarloaf and Four Mile Canyon and jokes about the dearth of parking downtown. Says Sam, "Boulder can’t be explained. You have to be there."
      Wesson says the seeds of "A Suggestion of Death" were planted while she was working as a correspondent for National Public Radio and the networks at the Denver trial of Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, convicted in the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995.
      "This is a different kind of book than the first one," she says. "I think I am a better writer than in the first book."
      Indeed she is. A few examples of her fluid, evocative writing:
      "I looked up into the inky bowl of the sky, but no answers were written there..."; "Fluffy oversized flakes were still coming down like tiny kittens..."; and, "In the dim room his pale eyes flashed for a moment like the scales of a fish that catch the sun as it breaks the water."
     So this time around, I kept Wesson’s book out of my mother’s hands until I read it. Then I called up Mom, told her I was sending "A Suggestion of Death," and said, "You won’t believe the ending.
Back to top.

Like a master chef who takes dozens of diverse ingredients and subtly incorporates them into a fine dish, author Marianne Wesson takes the complicated legal profession and turns it into a palatable thriller.
     "The responsibility of a writer is to give pleasure, but also to nourish the reader in some way," says Wesson, a Boulder writer and law school professor at the University of Colorado.
     One of her passions is to make the complexities of the legal system understandable to the average reader. She succeeds well enough that she's already developed a strong following.
     "It's satisfying, but also a challenge" to make readers understand how the law works, she says. "I want to be accurate, but still keep it simple. Precise ... but approachable."
     Readers wanted more. . . .In "Render Up the Body," she introduced her protagonist, Cinda Hayes, a member of the Boulder District Attorney's staff who becomes the director of the local rape crisis center, then is appointed to represent a death-row inmate accused of rape and murder. The shocking ending left readers wanting more of Cinda.
     Wesson obliged in her new book, "A Suggestion of Death." In it, Cinda Hayes - now in private practice -encounters for the first time the militia movement and an underground system known as common-law courts. She also deals with a client who is experiencing the controversial phenomenon of repressed memory.
      The militia members in her new book were inspired by the Oklahoma City bombing trials, which Wesson attended when they were in Denver - but they're all fictional.
     Wesson's stories are rife with conflict - lawyer against lawyer, employee against boss, woman against man. "I think situations where people find themselves in conflict are the most interesting," she says.
     "There are writers whose protagonists never experience a moment of self-doubt," but she doesn't think that's realistic, or that readers can identify with such paragons.
     Cinda Hayes, on the other hand, struggles with many elements of her life, not the least of which is reconciling her ethical nature and the job of being a lawyer.
Back to top.