When a killing field is unearthed in the Oregon woods, it's linked to a Portland surgeon whose increasingly aggressive behavior and explosive temper have already drawn the attention of his colleagues. Neophyte attorney Amanda Jaffe takes second chair to her father, a successful criminal lawyer retained by Dr. Vincent Cardoni when he is charged with multiple counts of murder. The victims have one thing in common: they are missing vital organs, which were clearly harvested by an expert surgeon. In this explosive and fast-paced suspense thriller, the forensic evidence against Cardoni is so convincing that even after his acquittal on a technicality, the reader, like Amanda, is sure of his guilt. And when a similar field of mutilated bodies turns up years later, Cardoni is again the primary suspect. But Cardoni has disappeared, and this time it's his former wife, Justine Castle, who's implicated in the new crimes, and Amanda who's retained as the lead attorney in the case.

The particulars of the killings are so similar to the first set of murders that Amanda is convinced Cardoni is involved. When he is found to be working at the same hospital where he was once a promising surgeon (this time as a custodian and under an assumed name), she draws the logical conclusion. But when she finds Cardoni's severed hand at the scene of the crimes, she is forced to rethink the assumptions on which her defense of the doctor's ex-wife is based. Could Justine, in fact, be the killer? Author Phillip Margolin's newest book moves at an almost frantic pace. Bodies pile up, evidence mounts, and everything points to Cardoni's guilt until the end, a stunner that surprises Amanda as well as the reader. This chilling, deftly crafted novel will hold the reader's attention to the last page. --Jane Adams

From Publishers Weekly
Devious doctors test the ethics of ambitious attorneys in Margolin's (The Undertaker's Widow) latest speed-read, and give a plot already adrenalized by drug deals, serial murders and organized crime an added jolt of grisly medical mayhem. Novice criminal lawyer Amanda Jaffe helps her legal eagle father Frank defend Portland surgeon Vincent Cardoni against charges that the doctor conspired to sell illicitly harvested organs to support his coke habit and maintained a private torture chamber for his victims in a mountain cabin outside the city limits. Cardoni is freed on a technicalityDand presumed murdered by the mob shortly afterward when his disappearance coincides with the discovery of his severed hand. Four years later, Amanda is asked to lead the defense of doctor Justine Castle, Vincent's ex-wife, when her fingerprints turn up all over another cabin slaughterhouse. Amanda worries that Justine, whose first two husbands also died suspiciously, set up Vincent, but Justine has another theory: psychopathic Vincent is still alive and doing his best to frame her. En route to a breathtaking finale in which Amanda plays bait to the true killer at yet another bloodstained hideout, Margolin buffets the reader with an endless stream of pulpy plot twists: a shamed cop's reformation, rampaging Russian hit men, creative surgery and astonishingly acrobatic feats of pursuit and escape by ordinary people. Only the hysterical pace of the adventures will prevent readers from dwelling too long on their implausibility; meanwhile, pages will turn fast enough to make the perfect breeze for chilling beachside escapists. 250,000 first printing; $250,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, Mystery Guild and BOMC selections; 12-city author tour. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Quelle horreur! The pace of Margolin's (Gone, but Not Forgotten) seventh thriller is breathtakingly fast but not so fast that the engrossed (or grossed-out) reader would fail to experience the awfulness of heads in freezers, hearts in coolers, and victims in the double digits. Mayhem rules when a lunatic surgeon (but which one of three in the story?) preys on the peaceful folk of Portland, OR. A young lawyer finally gets enough of the puzzle pieces in place to guess the grim truth. The book is a selection of the Literary Guild, Doubleday Book Club, Mystery Guild, and BOMC, so there will be lots of publicity and long wait lists. It's a stunner, a chiller, and a tour de force from an author at the top of his form. For all popular collections.-DBarbara Conaty, Library of Congress Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
Did Dr. Vince Cardoni commit the macabre murders he's accused of to obtain body parts for the black market and the mob? Or did someone frame him with brilliant detail? A mysterious coffee cup and notes in his handwriting point to him, but he proclaims his innocence. Mounting evidence continues to declare his guilt. Margaret Whitton uses hushed, secretive tones when portraying the murderer. She reads Vice squad detective Bobby Vasquez, with cold calculation. All scenes leading to the gripping conclusion are portrayed to leave the listener guessing until the end. G.D.W. © AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

From Booklist
Margolin's seventh novel is at least as good as his remarkable early books, including The Last Innocent Man (1995) or Heartstone (1995); it may even be better. His previous novel, The Undertaker's Widow (1998), felt like he was trying to imitate John Grisham, but Margolin is a far superior writer, and here he returns to the complex, intelligent storytelling his fans have come to expect. The plot is straightforward enough: a serial killer is torturing and murdering people seemingly at random, and investigators scramble to stop the psychopath. But, as readers familiar with his novels know, Margolin likes to play variations on a theme, and here he offers not one but two prime suspects--Dr. Vincent Cardoni, a prominent surgeon, and Dr. Justine Castle, Cardoni's estranged wife. Each accuses the other of a frame-up, and Amanda Jaffe, a rather inexperienced young attorney, has to figure out which of her clients may be a murderer. A very clever thriller indeed, and a delight for Margolin's many fans. David Pitt
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From Kirkus Reviews
"The combination of mass murder, black-market organ sales, torture and a handsome physician . . . dubbed Dr. Death by the tabloids" fuels Margolin's fifth transcendently commercial two-act thriller (The Undertaker's Widow, 1998, etc.).Act One kicks off when Bobby Vasquez, a Portland vice cop acting on a tip that St. Francis Hospital surgeon Vincent Cardoni has just purchased two kilos of cocaine from notorious drug supplier (and organ purchaser) Martin Breach, peeks into the fridge in Dr. Cardoni's isolated cabin and discovers two severed heads. After the cops dig up nine tortured bodies on the property, Cardoni is imprisoned without bail, even though he charmlessly insists that he's innocent and that his estranged wife, St. Francis surgical resident Justine Castle, must be framing him. Veteran criminal attorney Frank Jaffe and his latest associate, his daughter Amanda, get evidence that allows them, much to their discomfort, to get the charges dismissed, and their client promptly disappears, with every indication that he's dead. Four years later, Act Two opens when Dr. Castle is lured to another farm to discover a similar scene of sadistic torture just as the Multnomah County police arrive. Stridently proclaiming her own innocence, she tells Frank and Amanda that she's being framed by her dead husband, who must not be dead after all. Meantime, the Jaffes' investigators-including Bobby Vasquez, hungry for redemption after being kicked off the Portland force-are digging up evidence that makes both husband and wife look guilty as hell. Will Amanda, as Justine's lead attorney, figure out which of them to believe before she finds herself in the killer's torture chamber?The relentless barrage of gruesome murders and counter-accusations creates a legal thriller that's crude, grisly, horrific, and often suspenseful, though never exactly scary, except when you wonder about the citizens who are buying this stuff.First printing of 250,000; $250,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild/Book-of-the-Month Club/Mystery Guild selection -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Just when you thought that the serial killer subgenre had played itself out, something comes along to prove that maybe, just maybe, you were wrong. Wild Justice, Phillip Margolin's seventh and latest novel, is a case in point. Wild Justice is, indeed, a serial killer novel and has already begun receiving the obligatory comparisons to Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs. And though no one -- not even the most charitable reviewer -- is likely to mistake him for Thomas Harris, Margolin is a resourceful, thoroughly professional storyteller who almost always offers his readers a devious, high-adrenaline good time.

Two very different characters dominate the early sections of the narrative. One is Amanda Jaffe, daughter -- and employee -- of Frank Jaffe, Portland, Oregon's, leading criminal defense specialist. Amanda is herself a newly licensed lawyer and is about to encounter some of the grimmer realities of the defense attorney's life. Her initial encounter comes in the form of Vincent Cardoni, prominent local physician and longtime client of her father. Cardoni, clearly, is a man on the edge. He has a history of violence, is prone to erratic public outbursts, and is struggling, futilely, with his escalating addiction to cocaine.

The narrative begins in earnest when Bobby Vasquez, an overzealous Portland Narcotics detective, receives an anonymous tip directing him to Cardoni's mountain cabin where, he is told, two kilos of uncut cocaine are awaiting distribution. Violating virtually every accepted procedure, Vasquez arrives at the cabin without backup, and without a warrant. After making a clearly illegal forced entry, he discovers -- not cocaine -- but a pair of severed heads stashed away on a refrigerator shelf. Subsequent investigation leads to a shallow grave not far from the cabin. Within the grave are the decaying remains of nine adult victims, most of whom bear the visible signs of torture. The physical evidence clearly implicates Vincent Cardoni, who is arrested, indicted, and bound over for trial.

The trial takes a spectacular -- and unexpected -- turn when the father/daughter defense team of Frank and Amanda Jaffe successfully impeaches the testimony of Bobby Vasquez, the state's principal witness. With Vasquez's testimony stricken from the record, the state's case collapses, and Vincent Cardoni goes free. Immediately afterward, he disappears from view, leaving a single grisly memento -- his own severed hand -- behind.

Four years later, with Cardoni now presumed dead, a second, almost identical series of torture/murders comes to light. This time, the evidence implicates another Portland physician: Justine Castle, Vincent Cardoni's embittered ex-wife. At this point, a host of new questions arise: Was Cardoni, as he had repeatedly claimed, the innocent victim of an incredibly elaborate frame-up? Could Justine Castle, whose previous marriages all ended violently, have committed both sets of murders? Could Vincent Cardoni have survived his dismemberment and returned to Portland, ready to resume his interrupted career as a serial murderer? Or could another, unidentified killer have designed and executed the entire scenario for undisclosed reasons of his own?

Margolin drives his story forward at a furious pace, using sheer narrative momentum to offset the impact of the novel's more implausible, over-the-top moments. Unlike Thomas Harris, Margolin is neither an elegant nor a particularly subtle writer. His prose is serviceable, without being either memorable or resonant. His dialogue is occasionally stiff and unconvincing, and his characters, as a rule, are considerably less interesting than the relentlessly bizarre circumstances in which they find themselves. Despite all this, Margolin does share at least one of Harris's characteristic virtues: He can tell a story that will keep you reading until the small hours of the morning. At some point in the narrative -- I'm not sure when -- the occasional infelicities of language and character receded into the distance, and the story began to carry me away.

Wild Justice may not achieve the status of either literature or art, but it succeeds quite handsomely on its own, more modest terms: as a straightforward, unpretentious piece of popular entertainment. Readers in search of a gruesome good time need look no further. Wild Justice is a wild, expertly constructed ride that delivers exactly what it promises. It just might be (and I mean this respectfully) the beach book of the year.

--Bill Sheehan

Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has just been published by Subterranean Press .

FROM THE PUBLISHER

When the severed heads of two women are found in a cabin next to the site of a mass grave of long-missing bodies, all signs point toward one man: a surgeon with a history of violence and drug abuse. When evidence amassed against him is overturned due to procedural misconduct, the surgeon disappears and a second series of murders begins. Has the surgeon returned, continuing to ply his deadly trade? Is there a copycat killer? Or has the killer been someone else all along? It's up to Amanda Jaffe, junior attorney in her father's law firm, to find the truth—and not become another victim when she gets entangled in a brutal web of murder and deadly revenge.

Written with a breakneck pace and twists and turns that will leave readers gasping for breath, Wild Justice is a stunning new work from the bestselling master of electrifying suspense.

SYNOPSIS

PerfectBound Special Feature: An Interview with Phillip Margolin.

Seven years ago, Phillip Margolin seized the imagination of thriller readers everywhere with his chilling breakout bestseller, Gone, but Not Forgotten. After five subsequent New York Times bestsellers, Margolin now returns to the haunting terrain of Gone, but Not Forgotten with a mesmerizing tour de force of psychological suspense, an electrifying tale of revenge and retribution that shows a master storyteller at the very peak of his craft.

Thursday: Subject is still combative after four days of applied pain, sleep deprivation and minimal food.

Vice squad detective Bobby Vasquez, for months on the trail of a slippery underworld figure, receives an anonymous tip that directs him to a mountain cabin. He races through the idyllic Oregon woods, expecting to close the book on a long-standing vendetta. What he finds instead opens a Pandora's box of horror that will haunt him to his dying day.

8:10: Subject bound and gaffed and placed in upstairs closet at end of hall. Turned out lights in house, drove off, then parked and doubled back. Watched from woods.

Within hours, Vincent Cordoni -- a brilliant surgeon with a history of violence and drug abuse -- is arrested for a heinous crime. Facing a seemingly insurmountable wall of evidence, he turns to Portland's top criminal defense attorney, Frank Jaffe-who, along with his ambitious daughter, Amanda, must put on an inspired defense. Amanda's first taste of criminal defense work is as intoxicating as it is chilling, but it raises moral questions she's loath to address. Is she defending an innocent man? Or is she using her considerable skillsto set a monster free? Then Cardoni disappears under bizarre circumstances. Four years later, a second set of murders has begun ....

8:55: Subject exits house, naked and barefoot, armed with kitchen knife. Remarkable strength of character. Breaking her will be a challenge.

Has Cardoni resurfaced to ply his deadly trade anew? Is there a copycat killer? Or has the real killer been someone else all along? The police will do everything they can to stop Cardoni -- but they have to find him first.

Following a twisting trail of clues, including a harrowing diary that clinically records the killer's horrible deeds, Amanda Jaffe and Bobby Vasquez join the hunt-and themselves become targets of the twenty-first century's first genuinely monstrous psychopath.

FROM THE CRITICS

Detroit News

A pure rush from beginning to end.

Nelson DeMille

Wild Justice is what good storytelling is all about. Skillful plotting, good writing, an excellent cast of characters.

Michael Palmer

Wild Justice is the scariest book I've read since Red Dragon. I couldn't put it down.

Larry King

Here's a book coming this September from HarperCollins that I want to have you plan in advance to read. It's Phillip Margolin's latest, Wild Justice. The author of Gone, But Not Forgotten and other fine works outdoes himself with this terrific thriller. This page turner kept me guessing throughout, and the villain of the piece is horrific. Wild Justice is wild. —USA Today

Chicago Tribune

Twisted [And] Brilliant. Read all 17 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

The scariest book I've read since Red Dragon — Michael Palmer