Beyond Reasonable Doubt
Beyond Reasonable Doubt (Keera Duggan #2)
By: Robert Dugoni
“It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one.” — Voltaire
I read Dugoni’s first book about Keera, Her Deadly Game, a couple years ago, not knowing if it was planned to be a series. I’m glad we get more time to get to know Keera and Patsy.
Dugoni is pretty good at creating formidable characters. I loved his Charles Jenkins series and always read the newest installments of his Tracy Crosswhite series.
Keera reminds me a little bit of Tracy— but the lawyer version.
Tracy has her things: her shooting ability, her past trauma with her sister, her family and her dogs.
Keera has the same dogged, stubborn attitude as Tracy, but her battles are less physical and more intellectual. Her thing is chess and the lessons she has learned dealing with an alcoholic (but apologetic) father. She is in the courtroom in a battle of wits and strategy.
Vic and Del from the Crosswhite series were in book one, so Keera’s ‘world’ is the same one as Tracy’s and I’m really looking forward to Dugoni writing a mash-up where Keera and Tracy are working the same case! *fingers crossed*
Beyond Reasonable Doubt is definitely a legal thriller. A good chunk of the book involves the courtroom examinations and dialogue as Keera tries the case. There’s not a lot that happens outside the office or courtroom other than tracking down some witnesses.
Her Deadly Game had a heavier chess vibe than this book and it’s probably good that Dugoni didn’t give the same move-by-move chess playing in this book. It was a good introduction to the type of person Keera was in the first book and understanding how chess would continue to influence her courtroom strategy. Dugoni still employed chess language or maneuvers in this book, but in a more underlying way, which I thought worked well.
I went into book one not realizing it was a legal thriller; I think my first impressions reading Beyond Reasonable Doubt were more positive from the very start because I knew what I was getting into.
This book definitely focuses the most on Keera and her relationship with her client. Her dad is in the picture, but he falls off the sobriety wagon and is forced into rehab which gives us the chance to see how Keera does on her own— she stands as her own flavor of ‘Irish brawler’ and risk-taker.
Rossi is also still in the picture, though he’s on the opposing ‘team’ in this book. His and Keera’s ‘relationship’ continues to move forward as I suspected might happen after the first book. There is still a ways to go, but we’re making progress!
The other main character, and the foil to Keera, is Jenna Bernstein.
“Trouble always follows that girl.”
Five years ago she was on trial for the murder of a whistle blower to her company. He accused the company of falsifying documents and misrepresenting to investors what their medical drug could actually do. The night after he revealed to Jenna his intentions, he was found dead. Keera’s dad got her off— he created reasonable doubt, the only thing you need as a defendant in a criminal case.
Even though her company was dissolved and she was found not guilty, Jenna is now back on the stand for another murder— Sirus Kohl, the biggest investor of her company, former lover, and father of her company’s legal advisor, Adria. Sirus was planning to bring evidence against Keera to the US Attorney. The morning after he texted Jenna about it, he’s found murdered.
But Patsy is not in a state to try Jenna’s case. Keera takes it on with serious reservations. She and Jenna have known one another since childhood and, from personal experience, Keera is convinced Jenna is a psychopath and could very well be the murderer in both cases. Can she really defend a guilty person to this degree?
“she couldn’t help but think, were she to take the case, that this time she’d be flying on the trapeze, high above the crowd, without a net. And this time she’d be representing a client who was most likely a sociopath, possibly a psychopath, but most certainly a pathological liar.”
All she has to do is create reasonable doubt in the mind of the jurors and Jenna doesn’t get convicted.
I thought it was interesting to watch Keera struggle with how to defend someone like Jenna. My personality usually swings toward siding with prosecutors, but after reading the book Reforming Criminal Justice, I realize all the ways defenders help the accused get fair trials and not get taken advantage of when it comes to bail and plea bargains, etc.
I like that Patsy has told Keera it’s not her job “to get anyone off.” Her job is to “defend the accused’s constitutional right to a fair trial— that the jury found guilt or innocence.”
It’s easy to just view defenders as ‘accomplices’ to the ‘bad guys’ and think they don’t really care about justice, but it’s probably more likely that they care very much about justice and without them, the whole ‘innocent until proven guilty’ would go by the wayside.
And so I liked the way this dilemma played out for both Keera and Jenna.
I think it will be good to continue on this journey of Keera’s— former prosecutor— who is now defending people and figuring out how to do it honorably. Like the quote at the top says, it’s better to risk letting a guilty person go than to condemn an innocent one.
If I liked chess, I’m sure I’d learn more about that too, but I just can’t do it. Maybe I need a chess-lover to explain to me why they love it so much.
One thing this book made me think about was the impact of the Covid shutdowns on those in the court system.
“overcrowding in the jail continued to be a trigger issue since the Covid outbreak, which had shut down the court system for nearly a year.”
Because they couldn’t hold court, so many people— many who were innocent— were forced to be in jail longer than they should have been while they were waiting for things to open up again. It’s just another reason why the shutdowns were so detrimental to people everywhere and another reason to shake our heads at the overreaction and mishandling of the Covid pandemic.
I can’t imagine what that was like for people experiencing that and not knowing when they would even get their day in court!
A couple small critiques. I wish Keera had had more interaction with Jenna’s parents. We learn a lot about Jenna but then I was like- well what are her parents thinking about all of this? How are they viewing this situation for Jenna or for themselves? I would have liked to get more from them.
Just like book one, the word ‘intimated’ kept sticking out to me. Maybe that’s typical verbiage in the law field, but sometimes word frequency is something that bothers me for some reason.
There were a few times where I found it hard to keep straight who knew what information. The prosecution would discover something and then I was like— was this supposed to be shocking? Did Keera already know this information? Who knew which things first? Not a big deal, but probably some of the aha! moments didn’t hit as hard for me because I didn’t realize that it WAS an aha! moment.
Similar to the first book as well, there were times of overexplanation. I didn’t mind it for some of the legal things, but there was even a reference to the Truman Show. And Dugoni writes, “Keera knew the movie. Jim Carrey lived inside a fake reality where everything was convenient.” To me, if you are going to reference a movie like that, it needs to be able to stand on it’s own. You shouldn’t have to explain it because ‘everyone knows.’ And if you have to explain it, then you probably shouldn’t use it. I feel like The Truman Show is pretty common and Dugoni could have trusted his readership to get the reference.
One last random comment. I don’t know if anyone else had this flashback but when they were studying the bullet and commenting on the grooves and lands and the spiral-shaped impressions, I instantly thought of The Great Mouse Detective when he is comparing two bullets under the microscope and spinning them and then sees that they match! So yeah. I already completely understood bullet forensics…
Recommendation
Dugoni is almost always an author I recommend. If Keera’s not the character for you, I would recommend trying his other books.
But especially if you enjoy legal thrillers, I would give this series a try— though I would probably start with Her Deadly Game for more character context.
This isn’t a thriller that’s going to keep you up at night, but it’s still entertaining, and I’m down with following Keera around to see what other messes she has to clean up with her unique strategies.
[Content Advisory: 1 f-word, 20 s-words; no sexual content, just one disclosure of a woman sleeping with another woman]
**Received an ARC via NetGalley**
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