Louise Ure: FORCING AMARYLLIS A trial consultant in Tucson, Arizona, Calla Gentry devotes her time and energy to victims in civil cases. The rape and near murder of her sister, Amaryllis, has done much more than affect Calla's career; she is a veritable victim by proxy after Amaryllis is left in a coma following a failed suicide attempt...

Debby Atkinson Margaret Coel Chris Grabenstein Louise Ure

PRAISE for FORCING AMARYLLIS A surprising diversion occurred when I was 112 pages into a new mystery by Jonathan Kellerman, one of my favorite crime writers. Taking a break, I glanced at the top of my books-to-review pile, picked up a first novel by an unknown author—and didn't get back to the Kellerman for two days. The first novel, by Louise Ure, is called FORCING AMARYLLIS. Having started it, I spent every available reading moment racing through its pages. It's the kind of book which, during a hiatus for dinner, makes you impatient to get back to it, even if the dinner is wonderful. It's a tale that takes up residence in your psyche like a succubus, leeching your attention away from everything else. The reasons for this unexpected power are difficult to assess. First, a note of caution. The novel deals with multiple rapes. All rapes are vile, but the rapes in this book are of the vilest kind. They are rapes —some of them fatal—with lethal instruments. It's a subject that some readers might want to avoid. Not that the book is written to shock. All but one of the assaults have taken place before the story begins. But the search for the villain or villains inevitably involves a recalling of the crimes. The setting is the Tucson area, where the author grew up before moving to San Francisco. The heroine and narrator, Calla Gentry, works as a jury consultant. Her job is to conduct focus groups that help trial lawyers determine what kind of jury would be most sympathetic to their cause. Gentry has worked only on civil suits. She refuses to work with criminal defense lawyers, because her younger sister was the victim of an unsolved rape seven years earlier, attempted suicide soon after, and has been in a coma ever since. Helping possibly guilty criminal defendants beat the charges is something beyond her emotional and moral reach. Then circumstances force her to work for the defense of a man accused of a rape/murder similar to the assault on her sister. Here the novel begins to insinuate itself into the reader's mind in a way that most mere entertainments don't. Why that occurs is hard to pinpoint. The writing, while thoroughly professional, makes no reach for literary heights, beyond some subtle wordplay. Tucson in sweaty summer is evoked well, but that's only the scenery for the book's vaguely creepy power. The characters are nicely drawn, but no more so than is standard in the well-crafted crime novel. The scenes involving jury selection offer interesting insider information, but that appeals to our reason, not our deepest feelings. A budding love affair is sensitively done, but its very presence is formulaic. So where does the novel's invasive force lie? It may be that the crimes involved are so heinous that you can't wait for the villain to be caught—even though you know you're reading fiction. It may lie in the author's cleverness in constantly salting her story with smaller but intriguing mysteries along the way—such as why her sister lied to Calla about details of her rape. Whatever the elusive answer, Ure's debut novel (to use a relevant Arizona metaphor) coils in the mind like a waiting rattlesnake. Eventually, I did get back to the new Kellerman. It's called Rage. It's fine. It's one of his best. But the sinister interruption is what lingers.    —Robert Mayer, author of Superfolks (from the Santa Fe New Mexican, courtesy of the author) See Louise's website for more on Louise and her books!