Title: Bleed Out
Author: Joan Brady
Rating:
3.5 stars out of 5Publisher: Pocket Star Books
Copyright: 2005
Pages: 523
Keywords: mystery
Reading period: 7–8 September, 2008
Twenty years ago, David Marion, then a near-illiterate teenager,
was sent to prison for life for the murder of two grown men.
Hugh Freyl, a rich, blind lawyer, spots something extraordinary in him,
and spends years educating him behind bars, then securing his release.
Now, Freyl has been brutally murdered and David tracks down the killer.
Brady weaves together two stories,
Hugh's narrative of the last twenty years
and David's investigation,
dovetailing them neatly.
David is intense and paranoid,
alternately charming and terrifying those he comes in contact with.
The book is part mystery, part an indictment of prison brutality and the
foster system.
Entertaining, but the plot veers off into implausibility,
even before the dénouement: Freyl's childhood friends include
both a Supreme Court Justice and a presidential candidate.