One Night in Amboise

One Night in Amboise....  The title was captivating (not to mention I can't think of the book without One Night in Bangkok going through my head for the next 24 hours) as was the description of the story--one that has become very familiar to us in today's headlines:

One night in Amboise...on a college semester abroad, Jim and Corrine, two students who have been attracted to each other, have too much to drink.  They encounter a threatening drunkard, whom Jim pushes away from Corrine.  The man falls, hitting his head, and does not move again.  Jim and Corrine, very much under the influence, return to his room, where one thing leads to another.   

Fast forward twenty years.  Jim is a high profile lawyer hoping to be appointed judge.  Alicia Obregon, who has had a string of misfortunes (which not surprisingly correlate to her string of bad choices), calls Jim to say she knows about Amboise--that he killed a man and raped a woman.   

Blackmail commences--and continues until Jim has enough, confesses to his wife what has been going on, and takes a month away by himself to think things through.

Alicia turns up dead.  Jim, father, husband, judge, is now on trial and seen as guilty, by many, of murder, rape, and another murder.  

I appreciated that the book raises a number of profound questions--because to my mind part of the point of reading is that, through the characters' experiences, we question, learn, and grow, and hopefully become wiser in making our own choices in life--and I appreciate that in the end, it leaves the reader to sort through those questions.

For instance: Lies and fear.  The police arrive at the college in Amboise, questioning the American students about the dead man.  Jim pushed him away from Corrine in a genuine concern for her safety.  There was no intent to harm him.  But now he's dead.  He genuinely doesn't know if his action caused the death.  He's a college student, 19 or 20 years old.  He lies out of fear and easily convinces himself he's justified in his lie because he intended no harm, because he truly believed the man to be a threat, because the man won't even be missed.

But...lies, sometimes even the smallest of lies, lies we believed would be inconsequential, can come back to haunt us years later.

Jim further lies in the pursuit of a judgeship, when he says there is nothing in his past that could raise any questions.  He knows Corrine filed a complaint against him years ago--but it was dismissed.  Why lose his move to judge, twenty years after a fact, over an accusation--and one that he believes he is not guilty of?

There is the question of what happened between Jim and Corrine.  Jim believes they were two people attracted to each other, acting in mutual enjoyment.  He is shocked at her accusation of rape the next morning.

There are times Corrine herself questions the events, unsure if she remembers clearly, even as she files a complaint of rape with the college and later volunteers at a rape crisis center.  It is there she meets Alicia Obregon, a client, and tells her about the night in Amboise.

We could dig into other questions surrounding what happened in Amboise, including alcohol.

The book was well edited for punctuation, grammar, typos, and so forth.  However, the characters felt like mouthpieces to explore social issues, rather than like real people.  I would love to see some tweaks that would really bring them alive and make each of them more real, and thus more sympathetic.  That would bring great power to a book that addresses important and current social issues.

The book ends without making a declaration of whether Jim is guilty of rape.  It ends without telling us if he killed Alicia Obregon, but leaving open other clear options as to who may have done it.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ken Malovos has been practicing law in Sacramento for over forty years. He spent twelve years with the Public Defender’s Office and twenty-five years as a business litigator. He now serves full-time as a mediator and arbitrator.

Ken has written two previous Mike Zorich novels and both have been recognized by Chanticleer Book Reviews. Contempt of Court was a First Place Category winner in the legal genre of the Mystery and Mayhem competition in 2014. Fatal Reunion was a finalist in the Thriller and Suspense competition in 2016. Ken and his wife live in Sacramento.

His latest book is the legal mystery, ONE NIGHT IN AMBOISE.

Visit his website at www.malovoslaw.com.

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