“Cry For Justice”
Author: Ralph Zeta
I was recently asked if I would be willing to read / review “Cry For Justice” by first time novelist Ralph Zeta. While thrillers are not my preferred reading genre; I did agree to review this title because I know first-hand how challenging it can be finding a professional book reviewer when you’re just starting out as a writer.
The story within “Cry For Justice” is a good one and the characters are completely believable. Jason Justice, the book’s main character, is a successful attorney living in Palm Beach, Florida. (Yes, I did chuckle at the double entendre of the title.) Once upon a time Jason lived in New York and used his legal knowledge to help clients recover assets that were stolen from them. Unfortunately his father became seriously ill and that’s when Jason moved south. Not being the best at taking orders from other people Jason decided to open his own business and now he mainly handles high profile / high paying divorces because, according to him, there are three things you can count on in life: taxes, death and…divorce.
Jason’s girl-friend Nora asks him to meet with the daughter of one of her patients who recently committed suicide. The daughter adamantly believes that her step-father Evan stole everything from her financially affluent mother and then disappeared but not before he killed her; leaving Amy, the daughter, destitute and searching for help in recovering what’s rightfully hers. Knowing what these type of cases entail Jason doesn’t want to get involved but Nora refuses to take “no” for an answer.
After meeting with Amy; hearing her sad tale and seeing a picture of Evan that doesn’t sit right with him; Jason agrees to help her. What follows is a well thought out novel that doesn’t disappoint. Lots of unexpected plot twists and for the most part the reader will not be able to foresee what’s coming. The book’s back cover states: “be prepared to read late into the night” and I finished this book at 1:52 am rather than leave it until morning…
In closing, “Cry For Justice” is a great book and my only advice for the author (which should not hamper the reader’s enjoyment) is to ensure that future works are edited more thoroughly. In every book there will always be some misspelled words even though we try to catch them all. However, in the age of computers and editing programs it seems much easier to have improperly spelled words. Things like spellcheck shouldn’t be solely relied on because while a word may be “correctly” spelled that doesn’t mean it’s correctly spelled for the sentence it’s found in.