Steven GoreCritiques

Judge McMillan contacts Harlan Donnelly, a retired detective, to look into the case which appears to be a shooting between rival gangs involving drugs. The judge wants to make sure that no mistakes were made and that the convicted man had a fair trial. As Donnelly digs into the case, it appears that witnesses had lied, there may not have been a gang war but fighting within one gang. Was evidence withheld? Will he solve the case before the State Supreme court decides on the appeal?

Gore takes us through the points of law involved in the trail. Implied malice seems uncomplicated, but not as clearcut when the case is picked apart.

I really enjoyed this book, especially review of the fine legal points. Gore holds your attention through the whole book. I plan to read his other books.

It’s time to come clean. For Judge Ray McMullin, that means confiding in his friend Harlan Donnally about a judgment he made from the bench twenty years ago. The convicted man, Israel Dominguez, is still on death row with time running out. He’s reached out in a letter to McMullin. Donnally is a former San Francisco homicide detective. The Judge wants him to review the investigation. On the night of the Edgar Rojo Sr’s murder, Rojo had received a phone call, walked to his apartment window on the second floor, and was fatally shot from ground level. But from where Dominguez was standing, was the shot even possible at that extreme angle? They were members of rival gangs — Rojo for the Norteños and Dominguez for the Sureños.

Another reason the Judge wants to revisit this case is his own health. He’s showing signs of alzheimers and just needs confirmation – was the conviction valid; was the sentencing fair? Donnally is facing alzheimers in his own family as well. His father, Donald Harlan, a well-known film director, is desperately trying to complete one more film. But, he’s very hush-hush about the film. Will it turn out to be a jumbled mess, or a masterpiece?

I liked the character of Harlan Donnally and his longtime girlfriend, Janie Nguyen, who is a Psychiatrist. They are both portrayed as very mature and responsible. The gang members and gang rivalry was described very realistically. Donnally had himself been caught in gang cross-fire just months before the Rojo shooting. But, pacing of the story falls off with the amount of detail provided in his research as well as the by-stories of the Judge’s and Donald Harlan’s alzheimers. I rated Night is the Hunter at 3.5 out of 5.

Neither my husband nor I could finish this book, though both of us enjoy books set in SF and have personal knowledge of far Northwest California. It's difficult to explain what is wrong with this book, probably because it's hard to tell what the book is intended to be. Hard to believe this is by an established author; it feels like scraps of unrelated manuscripts by an inexperienced author, stitched together.

I do apologize that it has taken me so long to review this book, due to the holiday it was very busy.After finishing it tonight it was very worth the time, this may have been my first Steven Gore but it will not be my last ... two thumbs up

It took me much longer to read this book than it should have. I would occasionally find myself drawn in, but would quickly lose interest in a storyline that wandered all over.

I enjoyed this book. It was a well-plotted, fast-paced read. The story is complex and really sucks you in. This book exposes a potential flaw in the justice system and gives it a realistic storyline. The story about gang violence and how corruption can come into play in cases involving gangs rings true.

The story begins with a judge who has second thoughts about an old conviction as the date of execution for the convict nears. Detective Harlan Donnally is asked to look into the case. The more he digs, the more action heats up and the story unveils.

A parallel plot focuses on Donnally's father, a movie producer who may have dementia. The author weaves together both plot lines skillfully and the reader is drawn into the story.

I would love to read other books by this author, whose work I have not had the pleasure of reading previously. I would recommend this book for anyone who enjoys a good mystery or thriller.

This is my second Steven Gore novel but won't be my last. His hero, Harlan Donnally, is a cerebral former cop with a highly developed sense of right and wrong. Add in a pinch of action and danger and you have a satisfying read with a great story and characters who actually think about important issues.

Israel Dominguez is the subject of the plot in this one. He has spent 20 years on death row for the murder of a gang rival. Now he is nearing execution and the judge who presided at his original trial has admitted his doubts to his friend Donnally that Dominguez was actually guilty. Gang wars and the passing of time haven't cleared up anything of what happened, but Judge McMullin can't bear to just let it go.

An alternate plot line concerns dementia. Donnally's fater, a Hollywood producer familiar to anyone who has read earlier books, is showing signs of it and so is Judge McMullin. As each faces the inevitable in his own way, the emotional toll on Donnally gives this story depth that you normally don't find in a mystery novel. I like the relationship between Donnally and his girlfriend as well. This is an adult committed partnership not based on lust, but not lacking it either.

I really must read Gore's other novels. This is an author who provides thoughtful plots and characters to engage my mind.

Highly recommended
Source: LibraryThing win

Ex San Francisco police detective Harlan Donnally is asked by Judge Ray McMullin to look into a killing that happened twenty years ago. As the execution date of the convicted killer nears, the judge confesses his unease to Donnally. After looking into the Norteno and Surengo gang wars, which left a trail of bullets and betrayals of both cops and crooks alike. Donnally questions not only whether the penalty was undeserved but the conviction itself.
Even though this is the third book in the series you don't need to read the first two books to enjoy this story.

Judge Ray McMullin finds himself wondering if his death sentence for a man convicted of a gangland murder was truly punishment that fit the crime and confesses his doubts to his ex-San Francisco homicide detective friend.
When Harlan Donnally sets out to look into the case and provide an answer for the judge, he discovers evidence of betrayals that force him to question both the sentencing and the conviction. As he comes between two rival gangs, events from his past return to haunt him once more.

There is gritty realism in the characterizations of the gang members and their confrontations and there is much to like in the character of Harlan Donnally. Ultimately, however, wading through convoluted threads of gangland murders, Harlan’s own injury in a shooting, and the cruelty of memory-stealing Alzheimer’s disease leaves the reader feeling flummoxed.
Although the telling of this tale is often jumbled, there are moments when the action truly pulls the reader into the story. Unfortunately, they are few and far between, making it easy for readers to set this book aside. Despite the author’s insightful writing, the story never becomes truly compelling for the reader.

I want to be fair in this review, and I’m not sure I can be. Out of necessity, I read “Night is the Hunter” in bits and pieces, and I may have lost more than one thread of the plot. Truth is, I got very confused by the multitude of theories about the “cold case” crimes which Harlan Donnally investigates. Who shot who, and why, seems to have a dozen possibilities, and then, at the conclusion, we get another explanation. Or was it? I may have forgotten. Gore seems to write well, and sympathetically, about his characters, and makes his point about a rather esoteric point of law. So, I’ll take the fall here and say I just wasn’t up to the plotting when I read this.

An interesting story about a Mexican gang leader, Edgar Rojo, Sr., is shot and killed while standing in front of his picture window on New Years Eve. Israel Dominguez was found guilty of murder with special circumstances of lying in wait and was sentenced too death. Twenty years later the judicial system is finally ready too administer the legal injection to end his life, when an ex-SFPD homicide detective, Harlan Donnally sets out too prove evidence was mishandled to reduce his charge and save Dominguez from his execution.½

This librarything early review is going to be quite mixed. For the positives, I thought the main character was interesting. He is an ex-cop who retired from the San Francisco Police Department and returns to help a judge resolve an old case. I liked the settings for the story, which included Northern California above Shasta, Bay Area cities including San Francisco, San Jose, and Salinas, and other California locations. There is a point in the story where concerns about Alzheimer’s is discussed, and one character describes feeling confused and disoriented. It was at that moment that I realized that this story was a bit confused and disoriented. It was just a little too hard to keep everyone in their place, to relate to each of the characters, and follow the threads. So I can’t recommend this Stephen Gore book, but I might find myself looking at his 1st 2 books to see if they are any better. I think this author has good promise, and I plan to keep my eyes open for his work.½

I received this book from The LibraryThing Early Reviews giveaway. I'd never read anything written by Steven Gore and I have to say I most likely never will again. Although the main character was likable enough (an ex-cop), the story line was disjointed and the cast of characters much too long to be able to keep track of in an easy manner. I had to force myself to finish reading this book.

“Night Is The Hunter” is a detective book not just about solving a crime, but about the understanding of what constitutes a crime. Can a crime be perpetrated by the court’s own prosecutor based on the way he or she handles a criminal case? This book deals not only with this, but also with the reality, injustice, and cruelty of Alzheimer’s disease. Ex-detective Harlan Donnally thought his days of police work were over when he was forced into retirement. The San Francisco Police Department forced him out after he received a disabling gunshot wound to his hip during a street shootout between two members of rival gangs. When the shooting started, two innocent bystanders were killed and Donnally wounded by the shooters, before he succeeded in taking down both antagonists. After years in retirement, Donnally thought this was all just ancient history. After agreeing to look into an old case for a an aging judge, the past comes back to haunt Harlan. With the life of a convicted prisoner on the line; a judge’s failing memory, and mounting self-doubt lead Donnally down a dark path to the truth about not only the innocence of a condemned man, but perhaps the truth of his own involved shooting. This is a well written, very insightful, thought provoking story of an ex-detective who is not afraid to ask the hard questions to get to the truth. It is backed by the author’s years of experience as a private investigator.

I requested this paperback book after reading Gore's A Criminal Defense which I enjoyed. I wasn't disappointed at all. Gore is a former private investigator and that shows in his plots. His hero is Harlan Donnally, a good man trying to make up for what he sees as the errors of his father's ways. Dad is a legendary Hollywood movie maker, famous particularly for a movie about Vietnam that Donnally believes got his brother killed in action.

In this story Donnally's friend Mauricio Aguilera confesses on his deathbed to having lived a lie. His name isn't even his real name. Aguilera tells his good friend that he killed his father when he was a boy because he came home to find his father molesting his little sister. Then he took her to a sort of commune where he felt they would take care of her and not go to the police. He has lived ever since wondering if she is all right and whether the police are looking for him to charge him with murder. He hands Donnally a letter and begs him to deliver it to his sister.

That sets our hero off on a search that leads him into ever more fascinating stories. There is a mentally ill man who was charged with murdering Mauricio's sister. The system has abandoned the man and his life has been hell. The people from the commune also have an interesting story and a sad one. They are also hiding from the world. Then Donnally picks up a thread in his investigation that will lead him to an organization of men who molest boys. Donnally's world is a cruel one. However, the local deputy where he lives is a bumbling fool determined to find evidence against him on anything and that provides a few smiles. We need those light moments, and we also need the closeness Donnally finds with his Vietnamese girlfriend as an escape from the sadness.

Don't let that sadness keep you from reading this excellent mystery though. I was glued to the book and yet didn't want it to end. The varied characters are beautifully drawn and seem real, and Donnally's reasons for every move are realistic though of course heroic. The evil people in this story are truly evil; you'll hate them with a vengeance. Please do read Steven Gore's books.

Highly recommended
Source: HarperCollins

This is the second volume of a trilogy about a retired San Francisco cop, Harlan Donnally. I haven't yet read the first, Act of Deceit, but that didn't matter as this works well as a stand-alone. Having said that, I'll be reading the first book very soon because I want to know more about Donnally.

The book begins with Donnally and his friend, SF cop Ramon Navarro, in the shadows of the Golden Gate Bridge where they can see a body hanging. The victim's pants are down around his ankles and plainly visible is what for the sake of delicacy I will call priapism. Apparently the object was to humiliate him, something he richly deserved as a sleezy lawyer who never let the law or any sense of ethics stop him from making money. His name was Mark Hamlin. He had left word with his assistant and a note in his desk that if something happened to him, he wanted Donnally to investigate, no one else.

Donnally had been shot in the hip in the line of duty several years earlier. He had retired, left the city, settled in a small town in northern California, and opened a small restaurant there. Still he stays in the city a few times each month because his girlfriend, Janie, a hospital psychiatrist, lives in his home there. He is there visiting her and doing little repair jobs around the house when he gets the call about Hamlin's wishes.

The D.A., Navarro, Donnally, and a judge they trust decide to appoint straight arrow Donnally a "special master" to discover who murdered Hamlin, but not get into attorney-client privilege issues or complications. Ha! Just try to do that and still solve the crime.

I would call this one a thinking person's kind of legal thriller and it's a winner. Author Steven Gore gets into not only what happened but particularly why and looks deep into the characters' backgrounds for answers to who they are at the time of this murder. There is some danger and some shooting, but mainly it's the story of Donnally and the other major characters involved. And it's the story of corruption, a widespread evil that hurts mainly legal clients but also investigators and other lawyers.

Highly recommended
E-book released July 30, 2013
Source: HarperCollins, Publishers

Stephen Gore's novel title, Power Blind, is a good fit for the story. On its surface, readers get the idea that power makes politicians blind to ethics and legal risk. Certainly they protect themselves with rationalizations of expediency and delusions of grandeur. They create their bridges as they cross them. A second meaning of the title sets the stage for the mystery that Graham Gage, an international private detective, sets out to solve. Individuals and corporations with large amounts of cash to work with and manipulation of government power as a goal, set up obscure blinds from which they launder cash to pay off politicians. The biggest goal of all is to influence the Supreme Court judge selections who will write the law of the capitalist land. The U. S. Constitution then becomes a binding document with little connection to originalism.

The mystery for Gage begins when the brother-in-law of Viz his chief investigator is shot in cold blood on the streets of San Francisco. Charlie Palmer was a lawyer who became a fixer for politicians and wealthy corporation officers who got themselves involved in difficult personal and corporate situations usually because of unethical or immoral acts. Charlie was in way over his head prior to being shot, trying to fix problems at national political and international financial levels. He actually started gathering evidence of wrong doing, perhaps to ease his conscience after years of blackmail and intimidation tactics he used in his fixer role. The assault on Palmer gives Gage a good look at corruption involving the White House, Senate, Supreme Court, major corporations, offshore banking, bribes, torture, and murder. There are so many layers of deceit that Gage is blind to the complicated causes of the violence that stops Charlie's career.

This is a very good thriller that is relevant to current questionable activity by politicians at all levels and surprising Supreme Court activity culminating in the Justice Roberts decision. There is good action by a variety of interesting characters that takes place from coast to coast in the U. S. and from the Caymans to India on the international stage. It is interesting to consider the huge amount of cash that people and corporations are holding today, rather than reinvesting in companies, and how much free-ranging power that cash can buy.

Harlan Donnally was a former San Francisco Police Dept. detective who was retired on a disability after being shot on the job.

He promises a dying friend to find his friend's younger sister who was placed in a home when she was five. Tragically, he learns that the girl, Anna, was murdered and her killer was never brought to justice due to being found incompetent.

As Donnally searches for more information, he brings the alleged killer to court only to have someone hire an expensive attorney and claim that the man is really the victim. This makes Donnally wonder if someone is hinding behing the incompetent man's craziness.

Donnelly's search takes him to places that neither he nor the reader could forsee. This is well described and so realistic it's as if it were taken from the daily newspaper.

Donnally is the type of investigator who doesn't give up and employs some creative methods to get answers. He's very sympathetic and a character who the reader will enjoy.

Well written and recommended.

This is the third book in Steven Gore's Harlan Donnally series but the first I've read. Perhaps my unfamiliarity with the characters altered my perspective. But here is what I liked:

The plot is intricate and full of mystery and suspense. The story starts out slowly, gradually building until all the pieces eventually tumble together. The subject is current and handled incredibly well.

What I didn't like: I found it difficult to relate to Harlan's character. I couldn't quite grasp his motivation for putting his life, and the lives of people he loved, in such danger. The characters' relationships were a little abstract. I would have liked more detail in order to better understand what drove each of them. With the main and recurring characters, this might be found in the two previous books, so I would suggest starting with the first in this series.

Twice I startedreading this book but couldn't figure out what was happening. It didn't seem worth the effort and time to find out, so I did not finish it. I read about 75 pages.