Bitter Legacy »

After a week away, Matt Royal's ready to get back to the Longboat Key good life-good fishing, good food, good beer, and more good fishing. But Matt comes back to bad news: while he was away, a sniper tried to kill one of his best friends.

Even worse, now that Matt's back, someone's trying to kill him. And whoever is trying to kill him is trying really hard.

With no clue who's after himor why, Matt soon finds he's at the center of a mystery involving a lawyer's murder, a tourist left for dead, a ruthless biker gang, a reclusive billionaire with nothing to lose, and an ancient document that could bring ruin to some of the most entrenched financial interests in Florida.

Between solving the mystery and staying alive, Matt's got his hands full. But he'd better watch out or his hard-charging ways could get him sideways with the newest member of Longboat Key's police force, the undeniably attractive Jennifer Duncan.

For Matt, it's shaping up to be a really long week.

Publishers Weekly

A one-dimensional protagonist and frequent plot contrivances sink Griffin's so-so fifth mystery thriller featuring retired lawyer Matt Royal (after 2009's Wyatt's Revenge). When a sniper shoots Royal's closest friend, Logan Hamilton, in broad daylight on a Sarasota, Fla., street, Logan luckily survives what should have been a fatal chest wound. In order to make the would-be assassin believe that he succeeded, Longboat Key police chief Bill Lester arranges for Hamilton to be transported to the morgue. The plot thickens when Jason Blakemoore, an ex-jock turned mediocre attorney, is gunned down. Soon, Royal himself becomes a target. After barely surviving multiple attacks, Royal begins to suspect that he and his friends "were being stalked by true evil." A plot thread dealing with the history of the Black Seminoles amounts to a failed effort to make the violence have some greater significance. (Dec.)