I quit after the first two chapters. The language and main character didn't appeal to me at all. Unless someone with similar reading tastes to me tells me to give it another shot, I'm done.

Samantha Brinkman, a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney lands a double murder case. One of the victims is a much loved television star on the comeback road, and the defendant a LAPD detective.
This is the sort of case to give her profile a much needed boost, even if she is not sure of his innocence.
There were some surprises along the way. This is the first of her books that I have read and look forward to the next in the series.
A NetGalley Book ( )

Well this is my first Marcia Clark book. I had no idea until now that she has written other books and I may check them out now.

"Blood Defense" is the first book in Marcia Clark's Samantha Brinkman series. Samantha is a defense attorney in Los Angeles doing what she can to keep her struggling one woman firm open. When the opportunity arises that she takes the latest high profile murder case involving a LAPD detective named Dale Pearson and a beloved childhood actress, Samantha takes the case.

Told in the first person, "Blood Defense" gives you a really good look at how defense attorneys work along with prosecutors. And now in the age of the internet, we get to see how both sides play the media.

I found Samantha complicated. Not that it is a bad thing. We get dribs and drabs revealed to us as Samantha does her best to sit down with the media and also investigate while interviewing witnesses with her newest employee. She is smart, sarcastic, incredibly loyal, and also insightful. With her we don't get a lot of my client is so innocent (though some of hers are innocent) she tends to believe the worst in people except for her best friend Michelle.

Besides Samantha, we also have Samantha's receptionist/best friend Michelle and her newest hire Alex. I liked the way the three characters worked with each other, and how their brains worked. Being a defense attorney and working in a firm that specializes in defense you get to see how people work through a lot of evidence in order to show reasonable doubt. I hope in the next book we get more interaction with Michelle. We got a lot of interaction with Samantha and Alex with Samantha showing him how to work witnesses and look at evidence. Alex cracked me up with his bringing up two he read in order to be better at his job and how Samantha was constantly ready to shove those books down his throat.

Other than these characters, we have Samantha's client Dale Pearson who we find has a surprising connection to her and Samantha's terrible mother Celeste.

I really enjoyed the writing. I guess because Marcia Clark is a former prosecutor I would have thought she would not be able to write very well from the defense side of things. But this book proved me wrong. I like how the story kept moving and we had enough things explained to me as a reader that I got the ins and outs of how jury selection works, trials, and even how both sides are provided the same evidence but end up looking at it differently.

The setting of Los Angeles was as much a character as Samantha and other people. Living in a not so great neighborhood and working in a gang area we get to see a different Los Angeles in this book. We don't see a lot of celebrities and have characters who are living the high life.

The ending though. So that's what ended up causing me to only give this book four stars. We had some eleventh hour reveals that honestly came out of nowhere and at least two that ended up giving me hard pause about the character of Samantha. I don't know if you can continue on with a series if you are given cause to not like the main character. So for me, that was a misstep by Ms. Clark. I can see why she did it though, and even in parts why it made sense for the character, but it sat all wrong with me.

So even though I gave this book four stars, I don't know if I would read book two in this series. Things were kind of left on a cliffhanger (which I hate) and I assume book #2 is going to deal with some of the revelations that were revealed to the reader at the last minute. ( )

Not a fan of the main character

I like my heroes and heroines to be moral. This book dragged and has a convoluted plot with too many bad guys to make sense. Not worth my time. ( )

Marcia Clark's first Samantha Brinkman mystery uses the author's prior experience as a criminal defense attorney. Blood Defense is a fast-paced story with a plot that kept me guessing, and it certainly doesn't lack in verisimilitude. However, there was "too much middle" which did slow down the action a bit until the explosive ending.

The secondary characters all seemed rather one-dimensional, too. This is definitely Sam's show. She is a nuanced, fascinating character, but unfortunately, I could never warm up to her. Sam always has one eye on the percentages and keeps close tabs on what she can reap from every sentence she speaks, every smile she bestows. Useful for a lawyer who's trying to get her practice off the ground, but not the sort of person I enjoy being around. There's also another reason why I didn't warm up to Sam. I can't go into this reason in any depth because I would reveal too much of the story, so I'll just say that she makes several morally ambiguous choices that I don't agree with.

With the exception of a slightly sagging middle, this is a good legal thriller; however, its main character will keep me from reading further in the series. (Perhaps I'm more prosecutor than defense attorney.) ( )