Guest Review of Speak of the Devil
By Catherine Coulter
Catherine Coulter is the author of the New York Times best-selling FBI thrillers The Cove, The Maze, The Target, The Edge, Riptide, Hemlock Bay, Eleventh Hour, Blindside, Blowout, Point Blank, Double Take, Tailspin, Knockout, Whiplash, Split Second, Backfire, and Bombshell. She lives in Northern California.
If you relish hard-hitting, take-no-prisoner cops and a sharp committed prosecutor who doesn’t hesitate to face down evil, Speak of the Devil by Allison Leotta is for you. The Devil (Diablo) is the big kahuna in the MS-13 gang in Washington, D.C. Leotta paints him with terrifying clarity. He’s cruel, malevolent, power-mad, and you see him, feel him, and know that to him brutality and torture are the pleasures of his life.
Leotta handles the infamous MS-13 gang in an unexpected way. Rather than keeping them faceless, showing only their cruelty and violence, she takes the reader inside to see the “home boys”—most of the gang members are teenagers. It's chilling and deftly done.
As if prosecutor Anna Curtis doesn't have enough on her plate, she's also engaged to a man whose cop wife was “greenlighted” (a sanctioned hit) by the MS-13, and murdered some years before. He is also her boss in the U.S. Attorney's Office. Anna is up to her eyebrows dealing with the gang. I'll tell you, as you watch both Diablo and one of his minions, “Psycho,” in action, you really want Anna to bring them down.
As for the USAO—the undercurrents, the clashing personalities, the rivalries, all are painted with understanding and honesty by a talented writer who was herself in the middle of the fray for a number of years. She expertly lays out how and why the legal system works in the USAO in Washington, D.C. You see all the tangles, the losses, the triumphs of a group of people who just don't stop.
What I liked particularly were Leotta’s evocative descriptions of the courtrooms, the endless procedures, the waiting—the interminable waiting—and the calm, almost deadening efficiency of the judges.
When I finished Speak of the Devil I knew I'd learned and enjoyed and was pleased to have read such an excellent book.
