The Final Case
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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George Newbern
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By:
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David Guterson
About this listen
From the award-winning, bestselling author of Snow Falling on Cedars—a moving father-son story that is also a taut courtroom drama and a bold examination of privilege, power, and how to live a meaningful life.
"Ultimately, the mystery at the center of The Final Case is not about innocence or guilt, but about how one family’s profound attachments can stand alongside breathtaking cruelty in another.” —Scott Turow, The New York Times Book Review
A girl dies one late, rainy night a few feet from the back door of her home. The girl, Abeba, was born in Ethiopia. Her adoptive parents, Delvin and Betsy Harvey—conservative, white fundamentalist Christians—are charged with her murder.
Royal, a Seattle criminal attorney in the last days of his long career, takes Betsy Harvey’s case. An octogenarian without a driver’s license, he leans on his son—the novel’s narrator—as he prepares for trial.
So begins The Final Case, a bracing, astute, and deeply affecting examination of justice and injustice—and familial love. David Guterson’s first courtroom drama since Snow Falling on Cedars, it is his most compelling and heartfelt novel to date.
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“A unique, moving book . . . Nearly impossible to put down . . . It has an unexpected poignancy that builds as the pages turn . . . Though a story of hate is at its center, it’s enveloped by a larger story of fiction and wonder and love—most brightly that of a son for his father.”—Moira Macdonald, Seattle Times
“Masterful . . . Sublime . . . Ultimately, The Final Case is a thorough investigation into what makes the two main characters tick while providing readers truth about the human condition in that satisfying way only great fiction can do."—Elena Hartwell, New York Journal of Books
“Elegiac and touched with Seattle Noir . . . The novelist’s celebrated eye for detail is evident on page after page . . . Like Faulkner and Shakespeare, Guterson puts grotesquely evil acts at the center of his narratives. Like John Gardner, the stories are told in non-experimental ways and with a firm moral core . . . As in an earlier review of Guterson’s novels, ‘Here’s the admirable thing. His books keep getting better.’”—David Brewster, Post Alley
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Disappointing
- By Elle W. on 06-15-16
By: Jodi Picoult
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The Man from Primrose Lane
- By: James Renner
- Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
- Length: 13 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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A mind-bending, genre-twisting debut novel. In West Akron, there lived a reclusive elderly man who always wore mittens, even in July. He had no friends and no family; all over town, he was known only as The the Man from Primrose Lane. And on a summer day in 2008, someone murdered him.
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Good read, despite, not because of sci fi twist
- By Lulu W. on 07-18-12
By: James Renner
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I Dreamed I Married Perry Mason
- A Cece Caruso Mystery
- By: Susan Kandel
- Narrated by: Dina Pearlman
- Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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All that writer Cece Caruso -- a 39-year-old former beauty queen from New Jersey -- really wants to do is finish her biography of Erle Stanley Gardner so that she can finally stop obsessing about Perry Mason. Well, that and find a 1970 silk chiffon Ossie Clark to add to her collection of vintage clothing. And fix the broken front doorknob on her West Hollywood bungalow. But first she has to help save her daughter's foundering marriage, which is more than Cece could manage for her own.
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I Dreamed I Married Erle Stanley Gardner
- By phone it in on 01-30-12
By: Susan Kandel
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Picking Cotton
- Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
- By: Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, Erin Torneo, Ronald Cotton
- Narrated by: Richard Allen, Karen White
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Jennifer Thompson was raped at knifepoint by a man who broke into her apartment while she slept. She was able to escape and eventually identified Ronald Cotton as her attacker. Ronald insisted that she was mistaken - but Jennifer's positive identification was the compelling evidence that put him behind bars. After 11 years, Ronald was allowed to take a DNA test that proved his innocence. He was released after serving more than a decade in prison for a crime he never committed.
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Listen for the story not the writing
- By Professor Sombrero on 06-13-09
By: Jennifer Thompson-Cannino, and others
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After the Eclipse
- A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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A fierce memoir of a mother's murder, a daughter's coming-of-age in the wake of immense loss, and her ultimate mission to know the woman who gave her life.
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True crime memoir
- By Julie on 11-03-17
By: Sarah Perry
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Wilde Lake
- A Novel
- By: Laura Lippman
- Narrated by: Kathleen McInerney, Nicole Poole
- Length: 10 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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Luisa "Lu" Brant is the newly elected - and first female - state's attorney of Howard County, Maryland, a job in which her widower father famously served. Fiercely intelligent and ambitious, she sees an opportunity to make her name by trying a mentally disturbed drifter accused of beating a woman to death in her home. It's not the kind of case that makes headlines, but peaceful Howard County doesn't see many homicides.
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In a word saccharine and boring
- By Rena on 05-12-16
By: Laura Lippman
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Mislaid
- A Novel
- By: Nell Zink
- Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell
- Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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Stillwater College in Virginia, 1966. Freshman Peggy, an ingénue with literary pretensions, falls under the spell of Lee, a blue-blooded poet and professor, and they begin an ill-advised affair that results in an unplanned pregnancy and marriage. The couple are mismatched from the start - she's a lesbian, he's gay - but it takes a decade of emotional erosion before Peggy runs off with their three-year-old daughter, leaving their nine-year-old son behind.
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Misbegotten, mishandled, misfired novel
- By Julie W. Capell on 02-07-16
By: Nell Zink
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Where Serpents Lie
- By: T. Jefferson Parker
- Narrated by: Phil Gigante
- Length: 14 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Terry Naughton, head of Orange County's Crimes Against Youth unit, is the champion of children. Someone calling themselves the Horridus has been abducting children from their beds, dressing them like little angels, and releasing them the next day, the only clue he leaves is a piece of snakeskin tucked into the folds of their gowns. So far he hasn't physically harmed any of them, but as Naughton well knows, it's only a matter of time.
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Where Serpents Lie=Mystery,Suspence,Betrayel&More!
- By shelley on 11-10-14
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In the Country
- Stories
- By: Mia Alvar
- Narrated by: Nancy Wu, Don Castro
- Length: 13 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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These nine globe-trotting, unforgettable stories from Mia Alvar, a remarkable new literary talent, vividly give voice to the women and men of the Filipino diaspora. Here are exiles, emigrants, and wanderers uprooting their families from the Philippines to begin new lives in the Middle East, the United States, and elsewhere - and sometimes turning back again.
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My introduction to Filipino literature and culture
- By Amazon Customer on 03-28-16
By: Mia Alvar
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The Portable Veblen
- By: Elizabeth Mckenzie
- Narrated by: Julia Gibson
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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An exuberant, one-of-a-kind novel about love and family, war and nature, new money and old values by a brilliant New Yorker contributor. The Portable Veblen is a dazzlingly original novel that's as big-hearted as it is laugh-out-loud funny. Set in and around Palo Alto amid the culture clash of new money and old (antiestablishment) values, and with the specter of our current wars looming across its words, The Portable Veblen is an unforgettable look at the way we live now.
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Not what it was cracked up to be
- By Linda on 02-03-16
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The Man in the Crooked Hat
- By: Harry Dolan
- Narrated by: Joel Richards
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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Private investigator Jack Pellum has spent two years searching for the man he believes murdered his wife - a man he last saw wearing a peacoat and a fedora. Months of posting flyers and combing through crime records yields no leads. Then a local writer commits suicide, and he leaves a bewildering message that may be the first breadcrumb in a winding trail of unsolved murders....
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Crazy Glue'd Me To Story
- By Ted on 01-11-18
By: Harry Dolan
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After Visiting Friends
- A Son's Story
- By: Michael Hainey
- Narrated by: Dan John Miller
- Length: 8 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Michael Hainey had just turned six when his uncle knocked on his family's back door one morning with the tragic news: Bob Hainey, Michael's father, was found alone near his car on Chicago's North Side, dead, of an apparent heart attack. Thirty-five years old, a young assistant copy desk chief at the Chicago Sun-Times, Bob was a bright and shining star in the competitive, hard-living world of newspapers, one that involved booze-soaked nights that bled into dawn. And then suddenly he was gone.
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Son's Search for Father Brings on Self-knowledge
- By sheila kehoe on 08-15-13
By: Michael Hainey
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I'll Be There
- By: Holly Goldberg Sloan
- Narrated by: Laura Jennings
- Length: 9 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Emily Bell believes in destiny. To her, being forced to sing a solo in the church choir - despite her average voice - is fate: because it's while she's singing that she first sees Sam. At first sight they are connected. Sam Border wishes he could escape, but there's nowhere for him to run. He and his little brother, Riddle, have spent their entire lives constantly uprooted by their unstable father. As Sam and Riddle are welcomed into the Bells' lives, they witness the warmth and protection of a family for the first time.
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Needs to be a film!
- By TreasureHunter on 06-25-16
What listeners say about The Final Case
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- kim
- 01-26-23
Underwhelming post trial
I went to highschool with “Betsy”. I wished the Post-trial chapter would have elaborated on the sentencing a bit more. What changes were made to foster system because of this?
What happened to dad and siblings?
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- Bill
- 02-20-23
Frustrating
A finely sculpted courtroom drama with an important message, inexplicably padded with endless, irrelevant character sketches.
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- Doctor Dad
- 02-14-22
A good story not a great reader
I enjoyed the story but it was hard to do so because I was not a fan of the style of the reader for the audible edition. Overall he read with a sardonic tone of voice that made it hard to identify with not only his narrative character but with the overall sensitivity of the book itself. In addition he consistently mispronounced the name of one of the central locations in the story to the point that it became annoying. One might think he would take the time to understand how the name of a particular county is pronounced by those who live there but he failed to do so. I listen to a lot of books on tape and often find that the readers do a great job but in this case I listened in spite of not because of the reader and it's substantially detracted from my enjoyment of the novel
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- Michael T. Yanega
- 10-02-22
Newbern’s performance underlines a horrific situation
George Newbern gives Guterson’s account of his father’s last case a dispassionate delivery that makes the adoption and death of Abigail by a right—wing religious couple seem inhuman. This gentle Ethiopian girl was unprepared for the ferocity of the unshakable and merciless beliefs of her adoptive American parents. That such a case could happen, and that the perpetrators could be so convinced of their rightness, is a terrible indictment of our flawed social welfare system. Such people should never have been approved to adopt a child of a different race.
The judge’s summation in sentencing the couple to the maximum allowable penalty was very intense even though it was restrained. She left no doubt about her condemnation of the brutal mistreatment of this vulnerable girl that resulted in her death by exposure to the cold.
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- Kimberly
- 01-23-24
Disappointing.
An abrupt turn halfway through and the story lost direction and fell flat. A disappointing waste of time.
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- Jeffery
- 02-13-23
two stories-criminal was a 5*; tea shop story 3*
Enjoyed most of book. The part about his father and his attitude toward his defense work; life in general and his love of the law was right on. As a prior criminal defense attorney I related to his dad and his relationship with his son very closely to my own life and sons. I just could not see the author’s purpose for including the “Tea shop” portions in the story. I thought the author’s treatment and portrayal of the grandmother’s biases clearly had a cause and effect on the daughter and her husband and the way they treated their children, especially the victim. These two people were brainwashed, cultists and as the judge pointed out truly believed they were right in how they handled things with all their children and had NO remorse. His descriptions of the failures of society and government agencies local, state and international were very sloppy at best. People I have met in Seattle whom new the author’s dad loved him and his approach to the practice of law. Jeff Lantz
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- Nicole
- 03-20-23
A quiet book
I loved this book. It was a quiet book about a regular life and all those that are touched along the way. A contrast of good and evil, and struggle of the in-between.
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- Sam Pakan
- 08-29-24
Guterson’s Credo?
If this is Guterson’s credo, it’s a surprisingly weak one. Snow Falling on Cedars is a beautiful work of art and a far more stirring piece. This novel lacks the verve and depth of thought to transcend political propaganda.
Guterson is a great novelist. I just don’t know what he hoped to achieve with The Final Case.
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- Dr
- 01-22-22
Almost great.
Maybe I'm too shallow to appreciate a moralizing diversion from a really good story. I was very much enjoying the story until it took a good plot turn. And immediately another turn from enjoyable narrative to mildly confusing narrative.
Finally the ending went full circle and ended well, but the middle didn't rock my world.
2/3 of very good novel.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Angela P. Carter
- 03-24-22
Not what the title implies
Was very disappointed. The title only describes about 40% of what the title implies. Would recommend if the title was different.
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1 person found this helpful