March 25, 2024
Attorney Cleveland debuts with an underwhelming legal thriller that shines a light on contemporary racial tensions in South Carolina. White defense attorney Zach Stander gets a 4 a.m. call from Elijah Jenkins, a Black man whose grandson, Samuel, has been arrested for bludgeoning a white woman named Jessica Gadsen to death with a cross in a local church. The case against Samuel appears airtight—authorities found him next to Jessica’s corpse, soaked in blood, with fresh scratches on his arms—but Elijah believes he’s been framed. Zach, whose reputation took a hit after he represented a money launderer, accepts the case, and investigates alongside his romantic partner, PI Addie Stone. In the process, Addie stumbles across an unsolved double murder from three decades ago, which—courtesy of a suspenseful prologue—readers already know is the work of whoever killed Gadsen. As Zach and Addie dig deeper, they bump against South Carolina’s fraught racial history, endangering themselves in the process. Cleveland indulges in too many genre clichés—clients lie about their relationships to victims, female sidekicks become damsels in distress—and her narrative structure robs the plot of too much tension. Despite its worthy themes, this fails to take flight.