I can barely fit between my fingers how close Davis Bunn came to an original ending of Winner Take All. It was so close.
This story continues The Great Divide, and while I don't usually like sequels to legal books, this one wasn't half bad. However, regardless of what everyone thinks, this is not a thriller or any kind of suspense novel.
The plot is about a man's ex-wife who takes their daughter away from him one night for no apparent reason. The ex-wife is a prominent figure, an opera singer whom everyone likes. Marcus Glenwood, the ever faithful defense lawyer, takes up his case with vigor.
Marcus, as usual, is having struggles of his own. He is trying to get Kristen, his girlfriend, to accept his marriage proposal. Filtered into the plot is snippets from Kristen's past that explain her reasons of refusal.
While some of the characters are better than his other books, the rest of them are either overdone or underdone. For instance, the defendant is extremely bland and does and says hardly anything. On the other hand, the ex-wife is played up to be too much of an evil person when it doesn't really seem like she is.
On the surface, this looks like a same old, same old custody battle that ends predictable. That's exactly what it is. Like I said, and like I have said in most of my reviews for Davis' books, this one could have had a really good ending. One that made a lot of sense and would have been the best custody plot ever written. He even set it all up. But no, he went back to the typical.
This book is basically overrated, yet I don't regret reading it.
2 stars
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