58 pages • 1 hour read
Robert DugoniHer Deadly Game
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2023A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Authorial Context: Robert Dugoni and the Legal Thriller
Robert Dugoni is an author whose work has appeared on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Amazon bestseller lists. His writing career began with the publication of his first book, The Jury Master, in 2006. Prior to that, he graduated from Stanford University with a degree in journalism before pursuing law. Dugoni was a civil litigator for 17 years before he pursued writing full-time.
The Jury Master became a New York Times bestseller and introduced Dugoni’s first series, featuring attorney David Sloane. The Sloane novels brought attention from a mainstream audience. Although Dugoni has written several standalone novels, he is best known for his series, including a series focused on homicide detective Tracy Crosswhite and the Keera Duggan series, which returns to the courtroom. Dugoni’s insider knowledge provides depth to his novels, and his legal experience has helped make him a prominent author in the legal thriller genre.
The legal thriller is a subgenre of the crime genre that focuses on the legal aspects of a mystery. As in other crime novels, the protagonist is investigating or solving the crime, but these novels feature an ongoing legal aspect to the narrative. Like the police procedural genre, legal thrillers focus on the technical aspects of a criminal investigation, with particular attention to the legal and courtroom aspects of the process. Discussions of strategy, transcriptions of witness testimony, and procedural aspects of a trial, like motions and jury selection, are also often featured in these works.
Literary Context: The Importance of Being Earnest
In the novel, the mysterious character Jack Worthing is a reference to The Importance of Being Earnest, one of Oscar Wilde’s most famous plays, which debuted in 1895 in London as a great success. However, that success disappeared overnight when the father of Wilde’s lover began a feud that would end with Wilde suing the man, The Marquess of Queensberry, for defamation. During the trial, enough evidence was assembled to convict Wilde of “gross indecency” because he was gay. Wilde was imprisoned for two years, and because of his “notoriety,” the play closed. It was his final play, and since that time, it has been performed countless times and continues to be his most popular work.
In the play, Jack lives a double life. He invents a brother in London named Ernest so that he always has a reason to visit the city; in addition, whenever Jack does anything on these visits that he doesn’t want people at home finding out about, he uses the name Ernest. Wilde wrote The Importance of Being Earnest as a farce, and Jack’s double life leads to complications until the deception is discovered.
In Her Deadly Game, Keera discovers that in his youth, Vince LaRussa developed another identity—an alter ego named Jack Worthing, who values money above all else—that eventually merges with Vince’s identity. Jack’s double life in the play gives Vince’s use of that name more significance, and Dugoni purposely draws on Wilde’s play to draw attention to this duality. In addition, Keera finds a line in the play that resonates with her: “The truth is rarely pure and never simple” (147). She and Frank Rossi, as legal professionals, see the truth of that statement in their work every day, but it is especially significant in the LaRussa case. Anne’s death is complicated, resembling a riddle for them to untangle, and in the end, it leads them to two other crimes: Vince’s Ponzi scheme and Cliff Larson’s murder.
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