S. F. Prescott

Gripping and insightful!

Dan Schorr is a sexual misconduct investigator at his firm, Dan Schorr, LLC, and an adjunct professor at Fordham Law School. Previously, he served as a New York sex crimes prosecutor, the Inspector General for the City of Yonkers, and an adjunct law professor with Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. He has been a television legal analyst for Good Morning America, CNN, Fox News Channel, Law & Crime network, and elsewhere. He lives in Rye Brook, New York with his wife and two children. His debut novel Final Table was the 2022 Indie Excellence Awards Winner in Literary Fiction. Open Bar is his second novel.

This is one of the most interesting books I’ve read this year. Following a multi-POV narrative between an HR director of a prominent university; a junior associate at an independent investigative firm; and a councilwoman fighting for her wrongly incarcerated best friend. Not an easy feat and yet, Schorr accomplished so much in this book, slowly weaving the narratives together and bringing the story to an intense finale filled with hope. I can’t believe more people aren’t talking about this book. The themes of sexual assault and power struggles (sadly) continue to be timely and I applaud any author who successfully navigates this terrain and creates a compelling story that doesn’t focus too heavily on the actual abuse.

I was drawn to each of the characters equally and felt compelled to keep reading, curious how their stories would intertwine, completely gripped from page one. The pace was steady, the prose concise and witty; so much detail in 336 pages! Schorr’s professional experience as a sex crimes prosecutor shines through the pages lending to an authentic and tense read.

For readers who enjoy smart legal thrillers, compelling characters, and tough subject matter.

Synopsis:

Campus, corporate, and local politics collide when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.

Serena Stanfield, Mountain Hill University’s human resources director, has just learned that the school’s softball coach has been molesting teenagers in its youth summer softball program for years, and that the university has covered it up from both her and the public. Troy Abernathy, a junior associate at an international investigations firm, is navigating a turbulent, toxic workplace as the company aims to be retained by the university to investigate these sexual assault allegations. Megan Black, a new member of the Mountain Hill City Council, is thrust into the fallout from the national scandal while she simultaneously focuses on securing a presidential commutation for her childhood friend, who is unfairly facing decades in prison after stabbing her abusive husband to death in self-defense.

As additional disturbing details of the coach’s actions are uncovered, Serena, Troy, Megan, and other prominent community figures confront competing interests and unique obstacles while they each pursue different paths toward obtaining justice for the softball program’s sexual abuse survivors—and offer conflicting understandings of what justice would even mean.