Just Finished Reading Gone Again by James Grippando

James Grippando is a novelist who, like John Grisham, specializes in the legal fiction genre.  His Jack Swyteck series is about a defense attorney residing in South Florida, where I grew up.  So when I selected book #12 in the series, titled Gone Again, I was looking forward to some familiar hometown landmarks.  Although these turned out to be few and far between, I was intrigued by the story...skipping to the twelfth volume in the series was no problem as the main story was self-contained within the book, a story about a man on death row who Jack increasingly believes is innocent of his first-degree murder conviction of a teen-age girl.  Sashi was adopted from Russia (before Putin banned American adoptions of Russians) along with her younger brother into an American family...she had some serious psychological and behavioral issues, and the idea of sending her "back" to Russia had floated around between the adoptive parents.  Although her body was never found following her disappearance one day, she was assumed murdered through circumstantial evidence by the aforementioned convict, a serious felon and all-around "bad guy" before this case ever came up.  His execution is coming up soon, but now the adoptive mother has come out with her belief that he is innocent...on the basis that she is getting calls...with the caller always silent...from Sashi's cell phone number.  As Jack takes on the case, he discovers that there is much more to Sashi's disappearance and that organized crime, particularly with regard to human trafficking, may play a big role before it's all over.  But you'll have to read this book for yourself to see how it all plays out...

The last couple of times I visited Hollywood, where I grew up, Melissa and I would walk in the evening along the "Broadwalk" on Hollywood Beach, where there were eating places and live music performances.  As we strolled along, I would pick up bits of conversations from the other visitors, eerily noting that an unusual percentage of them were going on in Russian, not English or Spanish as I would have expected in South Florida.  I suspected that this area had become something of an ethnic enclave for Russians...Grippando confirmed this notion in Gone Again as he described the coastal area in northeastern Dade County...especially in Sunny Isles...north to Hallandale in southeastern Broward, just south of Hollywood Beach, as "Little Moscow".  In this area reside many from Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, and other East European countries.  It reminds me of the Indian "zone" south of Archer Road along SW 34th Street in my current hometown of Gainesville.  I think it would be fun to see if there isn't a street down there that is full of Russian restaurants and shops and where Russian is the predominant language spoken...

I enjoyed this first James Grippando novel of mine and am receptive to reading more.  But I'm unlikely to pick up another book of his anytime soon as I have several others to read first...