Buying Time by Pamela Samuels Young

Buying Time is a scandalous tale of blackmail, murder and betrayal, evoking John Grisham with a dash of Terry McMillan.


Waverly Sloan is a down-on-his-luck lawyer. But just when he’s about to hit rock bottom, he stumbles upon a business with the potential to solve all of his problems.
In Waverly’s new line of work, he comes to the aid of people in desperate need of cash. But there’s a catch. His clients must be terminally ill and willing to sign over rights to their life insurance policies before they can collect a dime. Waverly then finds investors eager to advance them thousands of dollars—including a hefty broker’s fee for himself—in exchange for a significant return on their investment once the clients take their last breath.

The stakes get higher when Waverly brokers the policy of the cancer-stricken wife of Lawrence Erickson, a high-powered lawyer who’s bucking to become the next U.S. Attorney General. When Waverly’s clients start dying sooner than they should, both Waverly and Erickson—who has some skeletons of his own to hide—are unwittingly drawn into a perilous web of greed, blackmail and murder.
Soon, a determined federal prosecutor is hot on Waverly’s trail. But when the prosecutor’s own life begins to unravel, she finds herself on the run—with Waverly at her side.
                                                                                             Synopsis from Pump Up Your Book

My thoughts:  I am so glad that I finally got to read this book.  It took a long time to get to me, but it was worth the wait.  I've truly enjoyed the last two suspenseful novels that I read so I was eager to jump into another one.

Buying Time did not disappoint me.  It has everything that you would want in a suspenseful novel.  You've got your good lawyers and your bad lawyers.  Next, throw in a couple of crooked politicians, and a drug dealer or two.  Add several suspicious deaths to the mix and you've got yourself a page turner that you won't want to put down.

I really liked that Angela had such a major role in the story.  She was a strong woman who was good at her job but had some relationship issues.  She showed us her weaknesses which made her situation seem so much more real than if she'd been portrayed as a super b*#$@ who could take anything that she was dealt. More than once I wanted to be her sister or her friend and tell her to wise up.

There was just enough romance in this book to keep my interest, but I didn't think that it was so much that it would make a male reader roll his eyes.  (I've seen my husband do this when he picks up something that I'm reading).  

All in all I think this is a great book that I would recommend to anyone who enjoys legal suspense novels such as those by John Grisham.  I'll be passing this one around to others.  If you do pick it up, drop back by and let me know what you thought. 

You can find Pamela Samuels Young on the web at:  http://www.pamelasamuelsyoung.com

Disclosure:  I received my copy of Buying Time from the author to participate in a blog tour organized by Pump up Your Book.  This is my honest opinion of the book.