Thursday, September 27, 2012

September Series: Heaven is High by Kate Wilhelm

The Barbara Holloway series is one I always enjoy.  Practicing law in a restaurant booth in Eugene, Oregon, concentrating on people who can't afford high powered high priced practitioners,  Barbara is a loner defense attorney who periodically teams up with her father, one of the area's most noted defense attorneys to work on some seemingly hopeless cases.  Kate Wilhelm has managed to hold our interest throughout the series by constructing interesting scenarios with an assortment of both clients and crimes.

In Heaven is High, her client is Binnie, the mute wife of a retired NFL player. Binnie has come to the US illegally to escape enslavement in her native land.  The problem is that no one can prove which country --Belize or Haiti -- is her country of origin.  There is no documentation, no relatives, nothing to prevent this woman from being deported to a certain death.

At first Barbara, having no experience in the Immigration services area, declines the case.  But when she is unable to locate a competent attorney to take the case on short notice, she decides to do some preliminary work herself.  Fans of the series know what that means--preliminary quickly turns to full-blown!  She's off and running, pulling in her investigative team, and trying to collect evidence to prevent Binnie's deportation.  It's an exciting story, with several plot twists, and a satisfying ending. Barbara is certainly moving toward a new chapter in her life, moving away from her father's practice, but will that separation continue in future chapters?

The father-daughter partnership is one I've thoroughly enjoyed in past books of this series, and one that I hope will re-surface in the future, but this one continues the capable, competent and feisty Barbara Holloway we're used to, and is another definite winner.

Author: Kate Wilhelm
Publisher-Format: Blackstone Audio, 8 hrs. 51 min
Narrator: Carrington MacDuffie
Year of publication: 2012
Subject: immigration, drug dealing, international kidnapping
Setting: Oregon
Series: Barbara Holloway novels, book 12
Genre: Legal mystery
Source: public library download

2 comments:

  1. This sounds like a good series for me. Thanks for the review.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Illegal immigrants is a hot topic in Sri Lanka with loads of boat people going off from here to Australia. This is one book I would like to read. There is always such a huge human aspect to illegal immigration.

    ReplyDelete

Welcome, thanks for stopping by. Now that you've heard our two cents, perhaps you have a few pennies to throw into the discussion. Due to a bunch more anonymous spam getting through, I've had to disallow anonymous comments. I try to respond to all comments posing a question, but may not always get to you right away.