Double Jeopardy

January 25, 2021
Edgar-winner Woods’s subpar 57th Stone Barrington novel (after 2020’s Hush-Hush) pits the superrich New York lawyer against two psychopathic relatives, twins Eben and Enos Stone, who have been paroled from prison in Maine, thanks largely to the influence of the state’s newly elected governor, who was their late father’s best friend. The governor apparently doesn’t mind that the two Yale Law School grads were convicted of murdering their parents—they claimed their father, Stone’s first cousin, abused them and their mother knew but did nothing. Stone is sure the pair have killed other family members, crimes with which they were never charged, but lacks the evidence to prove it. The twins get part-time teaching jobs at Yale Law and return home to Islesboro, Maine, where they buy a house near Stone’s summer place, setting the scene for a showdown. Stone’s latest paramour and a Yale Law School student, whose boyfriend the twins recently murdered, concoct a plan to take them down. That the savvy twins fall for what turns out to be a rather predictable ploy disappoints. Even diehard Woods fans will struggle to suspend disbelief. Agent: Anne Sibbald, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.