LauraD’s review of Guilty by Karen Robards
Romantic Suspense released by Putnam 1 Apr 08

I’ve got more than one Karen Robards title on my keeper shelf, but Guilty got tossed into the UBS box so hard and fast it scared my cat. I’m guessing others will disagree with me, but I just can’t identify with a hypocritical heroine. (Possible slight spoilers in review)

Fifteen year old Kat Kominski and her pals are having a night out, when one of them accidentally shoots and kills an off duty policeman in a robbery gone bad. They flee, and the killer is never identified or caught. Present day, “Kate White” is a single mom, and a prosecutor in the DA’s office. One of Kate’s former friends is now a career criminal, and begins blackmailing Kate. Meanwhile, hot Detective Tom Braga keeps turning up, asking Kate questions about her past and somehow making himself a part of her and her son’s lives.

I’ll just lay my main problem out straight. Kate’s a liar. At a young age, she gets caught up in a crime, and she never reports it. She goes to college, then to law school, and then (despite a goal of rapid financial success) goes to work for the D.A. Keeps lying! A criminal begins blackmailing her, so she tells more lies! To the detective! That she’s falling in love with!

Kate lies until it’s beyond stupid to keep lying, tells more lies to explain away inconsistencies, and when the truth finally comes out, she never apologizes.

Good ol’ Detective Tom has surely earned himself some grovel, but he does not get it from Kate. Poor Tom. Oh yes, did I mention that Tom has a Tragic Secret in his Past That Has Kept Him From Loving Again? Or Kate’s Eerily Mature 9 year old? Or Tom’s Big Noisy Loveable Italian Family? I could go on, but I’m tired of capitalizing.

Really, I’m sorry Karen Robards. I wanted to like Guilty. I tried to read it a second time to see if I liked it any better, but I couldn’t do it.

Grade: F

     Blurb:

     One cold November night when Kat White was fifteen years old, she and some friends held up a convenience store. In the heat of the moment, one of the others shot and killed an off-duty cop moonlighting as a security guard. Kat and her pals fled the scene in a panic, and no one was caught.

     Sixteen years later, Kat-now Kate-has built a new life for herself. Now a single mom with an eight-year-old son, she works as a prosecutor in the Philadelphia DA’s office. But her dark past rears its head when she walks into court one day and discovers that she is to prosecute Mario Castellanos, one of her friends from that terrible night.

     Kate is in a bind: even though Mario was the one who probably did commit the crime, he’s counting on Kate to make sure he’s not convicted. If she convinces the judge of his guilt, he’ll claim that she was the one who killed the off-duty cop. Before real despair sets in, Mario is found dead-in her apartment, and with her pistol. When homicide detective Tom Braga shows up to investigate the murder, Kate is far from relieved; the two have clashed since she started working for the prosecutor’s office. But when another man who knows the secret of Kate’s past gets involved in the investigation, she learns that her life-and her son’s-are in danger. Frantic, she realizes that she has nowhere to turn. Except, maybe, to Tom . . .

     Read an excerpt.