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Jonah Strasburg and his girlfriend Mattie Freda have driven from New York to Wyoming for a peaceful vacation before she begins school in the fall. But it all comes to hell when a group of kids start throwing rocks at them as they are rowing over the river rapids. Jonah gets off the boat and confronts the kids realizing that they have no fear of him. After a series of arguments he pushes one of the boys into the river to teach him a lesson and just get him wet, instead what he does is accidentally kill him as the boy drowns. Antonio Burns, an agent for the Wyoming Department of Criminal Investigation, believes the youth but he is still required to take him into custody as the prosecutor determines charges. Burns has no idea how bad things are about to get. The town prosecutor of Badwater, Wyoming, wants to make an example of tourists who think that they are above everyone else. He decides to charge Jonah with the inflated charge of first-degree murder instead of involuntary manslaughter which is what the case actually is. Making matters worse is that the public defender has recused himself due to a conflict of interest. The victim was his wife's cousin's son and he believes that Jonah is guilty of cold-blooded murder. Instead William Bogey, a disgraced grandstanding defense attorney, decides to take the case pro bono in order to make a name for himself regardless of whether his client is innocent or not. Antonio Burns is the only one left who can bring these people to their senses, but it is not going to be easy. He has a reputation in the police department where some people believe he is dirty due to circumstances from other previous novels of which readers are given a sneak peek. BADWATER starts out well when it comes to the child's death because this is something that was unforeseen and the story could have gone in several ways. It starts going into a spiral when it comes to the defense attorney and his methods of work. Suffice it to say, they are questionable and over the top. They change the entire direction of the plot, taking it from superb to just utterly ridiculous, even though the novel is not a comedy. It is unclear what the author was trying to achieve with this book. Burns is a troubled character whose problems just interrupted the narrative of the story and distracted readers from the main story plot. I give the author points in trying to be original with the story, but he needs to focus more on the plot instead of character development. What we have here is just a mess of personal events and no cohesion from one thing to the next. Still, I would give the author one more read before deciding to sign off on him.
Reviewed by Angel L. Soto, July 2006
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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