The Darkest Place by Phillip Margolin

Robin Lockwood is a rising star as a defense attorney in Portland when she agrees to take on a pro bono case for a repugnant client as a favor to a judge. When that case ends in unspeakable personal tragedy for Robin, she takes some time off to recuperate at home in Elk Grove. While there, she agrees to help a woman, Marjorie Loman, who is charged with kidnapping a baby for which she was a surrogate mother and assaulting the baby's parents. In defending her client, she learns that Marjorie has been living under an assumed name and is accused of another, more serious crime. The stakes have now gotten even higher as Robin must come up with an innovative defense.

Robin Lockwood is a strong and sympathetic character. A Yale graduate and former MMA fighter, her smarts and toughness shine through. Her legal strategies are clever and interesting and she's easy to root for, especially as she grieves and recovers from her tragedy. Marjorie is a more complicated character to sympathize with. Her desire to keep the baby she carried is understandable, but her callousness earlier upon learning of her husband's death is a little harder to reconcile. Some mobsters that may also be after her to recover money her husband owed add further complications to the story.

This book has several flaws, including secondary characters that lack dimension and courtroom scenes that don't feel authentic, although some of the legal theories behind the defense are fascinating. The story moves along quickly without ever anchoring strongly to the characters or to scenes in the narrative so that the action concludes before you are ever really invested in it. Nevertheless, the pages fly by quickly and it is never boring. Some developments are telegraphed but others come out of nowhere, creating both excitement and satisfaction. 

The Darkest Place may not be Phillip Margolin's strongest book in the series, but it is a fun fast read, especially for fans of legal drama.

I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher.