6. Notorious

Notorious, by Michele Martinez (March 2008)

This book wins the prize for creepiest cover I've run across in a while. Seriously, look at the obscenely long toenails on the woman pictured. The trend of showing just a woman's feet or legs on a book cover is getting kind of old in general, but they could have at least given this model a pedicure before taking the picture.

Anyway, there's nothing remarkable about Notorious, really. It's well-written and the story was interesting enough to make me finish it, though it did take me almost a week to get through it. I generally read books in one or two sittings, but the last two haven't grabbed me enough to sit still. This one's the fourth in a series, which I didn't realize when I picked it up. I'd never heard of the author, but then, I don't really follow the genre.

The protagonist, Melanie Vargas, is an Assistant U.S. Attorney on a big murder case against a ganster-turned-rapper named Atari Briggs. Her opposing counsel is blown to bits in front of her, right after approaching her with an offer of cooperation. The story follows the case as Melanie and the feds unravel the story of who killed Lester Poe and why, at the same time they continue their investigation and case against Briggs. The problem I had was that there's really no mystery. We know from the beginning who's good and who's bad and the conspiracy is pretty easy to figure out. The characters rang true, and that's probably why I kept reading, but I think the story suffered because we knew too much about too many of them. Maybe I harp on this too much, but it's not fun to know more than the hero of the story. I wanted to figure out the case right alongside Melanie, but I was always two steps ahead of her because Martinez let us inside the heads of the other characters. It was disappointing.