When one opens a new book, there is always, for this reader, a bit of tension. What world will this open? What adventure awaits? How good will the writing be? After the first two pages of The Siege, I exhaled and relaxed, thinking that this is, after all, a Stephen White novel, and I was in excellent hands.

That is not to say that the book opens in a placid landscape. To the contrary. The opening scene takes place on the campus of Yale University, where the police are camped out at a building in front of which is a young man, a Yale student, to whose body has been strapped a bomb. He tells the police that the bomb will go off in precisely five minutes. Terrifyingly, he is only one of a number [exact figure unknown] of students who are missing and presumably all being held hostage by person or persons unknown, for reasons unknown, inside that same building, a fortress-like structure unnervingly referred to as a tomb.

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This latest in the courtroom thrillers featuring Dismas Hardy and Lt. Abe Glitsky of the San Francisco homicide squad takes the reader right down to the last page in a murder trial virtually without evidence but plenty of motive and hidden secrets. Background includes blackmail, marijuana, politics, murder, and good old-fashioned legwork and intuition, much less courtroom drama.

The manager of a popular Starbucks-like coffee emporium in San Francisco is found shot, killed by a single bullet, and the owner, a prominent woman, niece of the mayor and sister of a supervisor, is accused of the deed. Hardy has his work cut out for him to defend her with the police and prosecution stacking the cards against the defendant with little or no evidence. She is charged with a second murder as well. Both victims were known to her while they were in college and she was present at the scenes of their deaths around the time of the events. Hardy’s friend Glitsky is distracted throughout by an accident to his son and the investigation had proceeded without his supervision.

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The Amateurs of the title, in this absorbing new book by Marcus Sakey, author most recently of the wonderful “Good People,” are Alex, a bartender with an ex-wife to whom he is perpetually late with child support payments for his adored ten-year-old daughter; mysterious Ian, a trader with a coke habit; Jenn, who has a ‘friends with benefits’ relationship with Alex but feels like her life has her in a place where she has ‘missed something,’ that ‘now I’m out of time. All there is left to do is wait to turn into my mother;” and Mitch, a hotel doorman who pines for Jenn [unknown to her]. All in their early thirties, with a vague dissatisfaction with their lives, they have drifted into a years-long friendship that puts them together for an occasional dinner at Ian’s, Cubs games in the summer, Saturday brunch, and Thursday evenings at the bar at which Alex works.

When the opportunity presents itself, therefore, although some are at first hesitant, they ultimately jump at the chance to do something radically different, and make a big score at the same time – an adventure, something they think is pretty much risk-free, and take them all out of the rut in which they individually and collectively find themselves. But such things are rarely risk-free, which these amateurs find out to their peril. The violence, when it comes, is fast, and unexpected, and from that point on [as was the case with Mr. Sakey's previous novels], I could not put this book down.

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Human trafficking, corrupt politicians, a Congressman’s extramarital affair, a love child and some more New York City landmarks are some of the elements of the author’s 12th legal thriller in which ADA Alexandra (“Alex”) Cooper and her detective sidekicks, Chapman and Mercer, are the protagonists. It begins with a ship stranded in Queens, NY on a Rockaway beach on which hundreds of illegal Ukrainians were being transported for entry into the United States, including dozens of women destined for the prostitution trade. Some of them jumped off the ship, attempting to swim ashore, several drowned, and at least one was found murdered.

Meanwhile, a rising young Congressman, DWI, flees the scene of a car accident, possibly to avoid public exposure about an extramarital affair and the child his paramour has borne. Politics also raises its ugly head in the form of the Mayor, who exerts pressure on the investigations to influence Alex and the police, and a scandal involving slush funds enjoyed by City Council members arises.

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