Buying Time by Pamela Samuels YoungPublisher: Goldman House Publishing
Publish Date: November 9, 2009
Paperback, 370 pages
Suspense/Thriller, Legal Thriller
My Review:
Why I read this: I was approached for her Pump Up Your Book Promotions Tour and Buying Time sounded like a book that was right up my alley.
How is the novel driven: Plot driven, characters are important, but the plot is what drives the book
My thoughts: I started this on Saturday morning and had it finished by Saturday evening. Granted my kids were not home, but I did have laundry, a nap and several other Saturday chores to do or I probably would have finished the book in about 4 hours. Once you pick Buying Time up you will have a very hard time putting it down.
I'll start with the characters, they are essential, but not what drives the novel. I love a novel that sets a bunch of characters up in the first 100 pages or so and you know that even though they have very little in common, somehow by the end of the book they will all intertwine. It was fascinating to watch how it all worked out. I relaly like Angela, she was a strong woman, a lawyer, a pretty woman, but she had troubles too. She didn't want to be in the relationship she's in and her mother is one of those who is always coming down on her. Then Angela meets Dre and she feels different and even stronger. But Dre has his secrets. And then there is Waverly. If there was ever a character who tries to do right but can't seem to get a break, it's Waverly. He's not without his faults as well, but for the most part I found myself cheering for him in the book.
The book is gritty and it's real. I learned something about the branch of insurance that buys out policies on terminal cases. Very sad in a way yet very helpful in another. The characters in this seem real and I like how the author deals with each character. Angela, and Ivy League grad and lawyer, a black woman at the top of her game. Dre with his problems is more of a street guy, but extremely smart. Waverly, is a little out there and just wants to make money. Then of course there are the bad guys and that secondary plot is pretty twisted as well.
If you want a non-stop legal thrillride, then Buying Time is the book for you. I can't believe I haven't heard of this author before. If you havent' heard of her, I suggest reading Buying Time and then I think you will be hooked. I think we will continue to hear much more out of Ms. Young in the future, I honestly think she could rival any work by John Grisham (who I love) any day and I look forward to reading her backlist. She has a great way with characters and creating thrilling and suspenseful but believable situations.
My Rating: 4.75/5.0
About Pamela Samuels Young
Corporate attorney Pamela Samuels Young has always abided by the philosophy that you create the change you want to see. Fed up with never seeing women or people of color depicted as savvy, hot shot attorneys in the legal thrillers she read, Pamela decided to create her own characters. Despite the demands of a busy legal career, Pamela accomplished her ambitious goal by rising at four in the morning to write before work, dedicating her weekends to writing and even spending her vacation time glued to her laptop for ten or more hours a day.
The
Essence magazine bestselling author now has four fast-paced legal thrillers to show for her efforts:
Every Reasonable Doubt (BET Books, February 2006),
In Firm Pursuit (Harlequin, January 2007),
Murder on the Down Low (Goldman House Publishing, September 2008) and
Buying Time (Goldman House Publishing, November 2009).
New York Times bestselling author Sheldon Siegel described
Buying Time, Pamela’s first stand-alone novel, as a “deftly plotted thriller that combines the best of Lisa Scottoline and Robert Crais.”
Pamela has achieved a successful writing career while working as Managing Counsel for Labor and Employment Law for a large corporation in Southern California. Prior to that, she served as Employment Law Counsel for Raytheon Company and spent several years with the law firm of O’Melveny & Myers, LLP in Los Angeles. A former journalist, Pamela began her broadcasting career as a production assistant at WXYZ-TV in Detroit, where she was quickly promoted to news writer. To escape the chilly Detroit winters, she returned home to Los Angeles and worked at KCBS-TV as a news writer and associate producer.
Pamela has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from USC, a master’s degree in broadcasting from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism and received her law degree from UC Berkeley’s Boalt Hall School of Law. She currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Southern California Chapter of Mystery Writers of America and is the Fiction Expert for BizyMoms.com.
Pamela is a frequent speaker on the topics of discrimination law, diversity, writing and pursuing your passion. She is married and lives in the Los Angeles area. To contact Pamela or to read an excerpt of her books, visit
www.pamelasamuelsyoung.com.
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About Buying Time
Buying Time is a scandalous tale of blackmail, murder and betrayal, evoking John Grisham with a dash of Terry McMillan.
Waverly Sloan is a down-on-his-luck lawyer. But just when he’s about to hit rock bottom, he stumbles upon a business with the potential to solve all of his problems.
In Waverly’s new line of work, he comes to the aid of people in desperate need of cash. But there’s a catch. His clients must be terminally ill and willing to sign over rights to their life insurance policies before they can collect a dime. Waverly then finds investors eager to advance them thousands of dollars—including a hefty broker’s fee for himself—in exchange for a significant return on their investment once the clients take their last breath.
The stakes get higher when Waverly brokers the policy of the cancer-stricken wife of Lawrence Erickson, a high-powered lawyer who’s bucking to become the next U.S. Attorney General. When Waverly’s clients start dying sooner than they should, both Waverly and Erickson—who has some skeletons of his own to hide—are unwittingly drawn into a perilous web of greed, blackmail and murder.
Soon, a determined federal prosecutor is hot on Waverly’s trail. But when the prosecutor’s own life begins to unravel, she finds herself on the run—with Waverly at her side.
Book Excerpt
PROLOGUE
Veronika Myers tried to convince them, but no one would listen. Her suspicions, they said, were simply a byproduct of her grief.
Each time she broached the subject with her brother, Jason, he walked out of the room. Darlene, her best friend, suggested a girls’ night out with some heavy drinking. Aunt Flo urged her to spend more time in prayer.
Veronika knew she was wasting her time with this woman, too, but couldn’t help herself.
“My mother was murdered,” Veronika told the funeral home attendant. “But nobody believes it.”
The plump redhead with too much eye shadow glanced down at the papers on her desk, then looked up. “It says here that your mother died in the hospital. From brain cancer.”
“That’s not true,” Veronika snapped, her response a little too sharp and a tad too loud.
Yes, her mother had brain cancer, but she wasn’t on her deathbed. Not yet. They had just spent a long afternoon together, laughing and talking and watching All My Children. Veronika could not, and would not accept that the most important person in her life had suddenly died. She knew what everyone else refused to believe. Her mother had been murdered.
“Did they conduct an autopsy?” the woman asked.
Veronika sighed and looked away. There had been no autopsy because everyone dismissed her as a grief-stricken lunatic. When she reported the murder to the police, a disinterested cop dutifully took her statement, but she could tell that nothing would come of it. Without any solid evidence, she was wasting everyone’s time, including her own.
“No,” Veronika said. “There wasn’t an autopsy.”
The funeral home attendant smiled sympathetically.
Veronika let out a long, exasperated breath, overwhelmed by the futility of what she was trying to prove. “Never mind,” she said. “What else do you need me to sign?”
* * *
Later that night, Veronika lay in bed, drained from another marathon crying session. She rummaged through the nightstand, retrieved a bottle of sleeping pills and popped two into her mouth. She tried to swallow them dry, but her throat was too sore from all the crying.
Tears pooled in her eyes as she headed to the kitchen for a glass of water. “Don’t worry, Mama,” Veronika sniffed. “I won’t let them get away with it.”
Just as she reached the end of the hallway, a heavy gloved hand clamped down hard across her mouth as her arms were pinned behind her back. Panic instantly hurled her into action. Veronika tried to scream, but the big hand reduced her shriek to a mere muffle. She frantically kicked and wrestled and twisted her body, but her attacker’s grip would not yield.
When she felt her body being lifted off the ground and carried back down the hallway, she realized there were two of them and her terror level intensified. But so did her survival instinct. She continued to wildly swing her legs backward and forward, up and down, right and left, eventually striking what felt like a leg, then a stomach.
As they crossed the threshold of her bedroom, she heard a loud, painful moan that told her she had likely connected with the groin of one of her assailants.
“Cut it out!” said a husky, male voice. “Grab her legs!” he ordered his partner. “Hurry up!”
The men dumped her face down onto the bed, her arms still restrained behind her back. The big hand slipped from her mouth and Veronika’s first cry escaped, but was quickly muted when a much heavier hand gripped the back of her neck and pressed her face into the comforter.
Fearing her attackers were going to rape, then kill her, Veronika defiantly arched her back and tried to roll her body into a tight ball. At only 130 pounds, she was no physical match for her assailants. They easily overpowered her, forcing her back into a prone position. As one man sat on her upper legs, strapping her left arm to her side, the other man bent her right arm at the elbow and guided her hand up toward her forehead.
During the deepest period of her grief, Veronika had longed to join her mother. But now that she was face-to-face with the possibility of death, she fought valiantly for life.
That changed, however, the second Veronika felt something cold and hard connect with her right temple. She stiffened as one of the men grabbed her fingers and wrapped them around the butt of a gun. At that precise instant, Veronika knew with certainty that her suspicions were indeed fact. Her mother had been murdered and now the same killers had come to silence her before she could expose the truth. And just like her mother’s death, her own murder would go undetected, dismissed as the suicide of a grieving daughter. A conclusion no one would question.
As the man placed his hand on top of hers and prepared to pull the trigger, a miraculous, power-infused sensation snuffed out what was left of Veronika’s fear, causing her body to go limp. The heavy pounding of her heart slowed and she felt light enough to float away.
Completely relaxed now, Veronika closed her eyes, said a short prayer, and waited for a glorious reunion with her mother.
Giveaway:
I would like to giveaway my copy of Buying Time to one lucky commentor. Open to US/Canada only. Comment and tell me what your favorite sub-genre of suspense is (legal, medical, etc.). Extra entries for following (GFC, email, RSS, twitter, GoodReads, Facebook, etc). Other entries for tweeting and blogging about. Leave a single comment or separate comments. Giveaway open through 11/9.
FTC Information: Special thanks to the author for sending me a review copy. All opinions expressed are my own and they are my honest opinions, I am not compensated anything beyond receiving the book for review. I have Amazon links on my review pages but I do not make any money from these because of NC laws. I put them solely for people to check out the books on a retail site.
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