Natural Suspect: A Collaborative Novel of Suspense

by Lisa Scottoline, Michael Palmer, John Katzenbach, et al.

Book Overview

What Carl Hiaasen and a host of South Florida's finest authors did for Sunshine State crime capers in the New York Times bestseller Naked Came the Manatee, William Bernhardt now does for legal... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0345437691
• ISBN13: 9780345437693
• Release Date: July 2002
• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.3" x 6.8"

Customer Reviews

A legal thriller with a twist

William Bernhardt's Natural Suspect is a legal thriller with a twist: Bernhardt starts the event with a chapter setting the plot; then writers from Phillip Margolin and Brad Meltzer to Leslie Glass and Lisa Scottoline add their own twists to the tale. The result: a remarkably smooth yet unpredictable story which fans of crime and suspense will appreciate.

Big Scary Trouble, Big Scary Rabbit

While ostensibly a "legal thriller" about the death of a tycoon, in reality this book reads more like a zany combo of chase movie/murder mystery, with a lethal cross-dressing assassin targeting one character after another. The authors then throw in adulterous rich people, a secret organization avenging corporate misdeeds, a giant pet rabbit with a hi-tech secret, and a defense-attorney heroine with a secret benefactor. A group of famous mystery writers each wrote a chapter of this book, whose profits benefit the Nature Conservancy (hence the title), with each chapter throwing in a new plot twist and ending in a cliff-hanger, until the hilarious end. Might make a lively TV movie, and definitely makes for a fast, fun read.

Fun read

See storyline above.William Bernhardt leads of this novel with the first chapter, in a collaborative work of fiction sure to entertain. The uniqueness lies in the fact that each of the authors didn’t know the storyline until it was his/her turn to write a chapter. When the author is finished with his/her chapter, he sends it on to the next.The end result is a fun and entertaining mystery written by some very talented writers (see above). The novel was written more for fun and should be read with this in mind. If you want a quick and entertaining read that has a lot of humor and surprises, this is it.Recommended for all mystery lovers with a flair for fun.

Natural Suspect...a natural wonder!

NATURAL SUSPECT is a roller coaster ride on the noir side which alternately keeps you glued to your chair while its amazingly cohesive plot unreels and hanging on for dear life to keep from rolling on the floor with laughter. Mavened by master of suspense William Bernhardt, this delightful whodunnit-and-why? thriller combines his own talents with those of eleven other top writers in the genre round-robin fashion...each in turn adding hir own unique touch to whatever has gone before...and moves hilariously from twist to turn as we follow the trail of a cunning killer down one blind alley after another to the novel's absolutely logical denouement. There's simply no way to capsulize the plotline since what Bernhardt begins as a dysfunctional family saga...mega-millionaire Daddy Hightower, after threatening to disinherit his entire wacky family, has been found dead in the deep freeze...speedily develops a life of its own as a hoot-and-a-half pastiche where all the gimmicks and stock characters appropriate to the genre (from the hard-boiled gumshoe to amateur-detective-wins-out with overtones of international espionage plus Hitchcock's classic McGuffin in the form of a rabbit) are brilliantly satirized, limited only by the imaginations of the individual writers and the reader's willingness to accept their premises. What fun! its authors must have had playing Can-You-Top-This? and their pleasure is thoroughly contagious. As a reader, I found myself mentally rubbing my hands in glee to see what would/could happen next under the now-given circumstances. What is perhaps most unusual of all about this surprisingly compelling exercise in suspense is just how well the whole story hangs together without ever violating our willingness to suspend disbelief. These folks really know their business, and I'd call NATURAL SUSPECT a "natural" wonder and a definite must-read for fans of the genre.

A refreshing concept that works

The Hightowers of Hightower oil may be very rich, but they are not happy. The mother Julia is a drunk; the son is a dilettante with a wife who has a single digit IQ; and the daughter believes play is weed. The patriarch, Arthur, never encouraged them to work, preferring they remain under his control until he was ready to divorce his wife and disinherit his children. Before that could happen, Arthur is found murdered, frozen solid in the family's locked freezer. The wife is arrested because the victim's blood was on her blouse and her pearls were found in his hands. She is a heavy drunk who suffers blackouts and had no alibi. Julia hires a no name lawyer who realizes that there is a lot more to this case than meets the eye. NATURAL SUSPECT is one story line divided by chapters with each chapter written by some very famous writers in the mystery field including Leslie Glass, Michael Palmer and John Lescroart. The chapters are numbered but no credit is given to the author (except for chapter one written by William Bernhardt) so readers will have a mystery trying to figure out which writer wrote what chapter. The chapters smoothly flow into another, but with different styles making for an interesting puzzle inside a who-done-it that turns NATURAL SUSPECT into a fine read.Harriet Klausner