Mad’s Cradle To Grave Primer

In this moving, brilliantly rendered page-turner of a novel, veteran screenwriter Tom Topor (The Accused) delivers what will be one of the most talked-about books of the season, a completely engrossing thriller that explores the mysteries of the heart as well as those of class, identity, and paternity. Telecommunications magnate Matthew Marshall is dead. His wife and three children are stunned to learn that half of his $105-million estate has been bequeathed in a codicil to his will, to a child they never knew existed, the product of an affair years before during Marshall’s service in Vietnam. It is up to Adam Bruno, a street-smart son of a bookie, to find out if this child is still alive and living in the United States. A New York defense lawyer until he rubbed up against the wrong side of the justice system too many times, Bruno knows how to negotiate the city’s political and social mine fields. But Adam Bruno finds himself thwarted at every turn by the convoluted legacy of a man whose closely held secrets constitute a nearly rock-solid facade. Even the most private of public men leaves traces of his innermost self; and it is when Adam Bruno unravels the secrets of whom Matthew Marshall truly loved that The Codicil reaches the pinnacle of its dramatic power.