A criminal attorney is threatened with death if she wins her first big case. Despite her discomfort with her upscale L.A. firm—her mentor, Richard Dressner, is a world-class harasser—Debra Laslow is going all out to defend Dr. Kenneth Avedon against the charge that he raped his receptionist, Penny Bailor. For everybody who asks how she can defend the man—her close-knit family, the cops, the female lawyers she's friendly with, the Bailor brother who turns up in her synagogue—she has the same answer: Accused criminals are entitled to their day in court. But she's shaken when her bitchy rival Madeleine Chase and her best friend Susan Clemens are shot to death and their tongues cut out (similar murders will follow, as you'd expect from the author of Fair Game, 1993, and Angel of Death, 1994); and, after several anonymous messages warn her, ``GET OUT OF THE WAY OF JUSTICE!,'' she finally figures out what everyone else will have guessed from the beginning—that somebody is killing lawyers who've won acquittals for accused rapists. So Debra, who can't afford to lose Avedon's case—her involvement in Madeleine's and Susan's murders has poisoned her reputation with other firms—sees that she can't afford to win it either. As the case wears on, she grows more and more suspicious of the men around her—from her new suitors, plausible ex-lawyer Jeff Silver and Orthodox contractor Adam Bergman, to hectoring cop Marty Simms— scrutinizing them with equal care as possible suspects and possible spouses. Debra's even frazzled by her old friend Claire Werner, the judge on the case, who seems determined to rule against her on every point. Savvy readers, trusting that Debra has to win the case to trip the alarm, won't be distracted. A satisfyingly sturdy yarn—all wool and a yard wide—for Faye Kellerman fans and other right-minded enemies of rapists and vigilantes. Read full book review >

This year, April 20 is not only Hitler's birthday but Holocaust Remembrance Day—and what better way for neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers to celebrate than to parade through the Jewish suburbs of L.A.? Not everybody agrees, however: Barry Lewis, the lawyer who's defending the White Alliance's right to march, has been getting vituperative phone calls and hate mail from the Jewish community (his own father denounces him), and somebody's painted a Star of David on his front door. Matters only go from bad to worse after the parade, when a Holocaust survivor has a fatal stroke after being shoved by White Alliance organizer Roy Benning, and Lewis is pressured to defend Benning against criminal charges. With so many factions (Lewis's family, the deniers and supremacists, and organizations ranging from the ACLU to the Shield of Jewish Protectors) tensely watching each other, the scene is set for some tough debate—until Lewis is blown up by a car bomb. Other principals in the case are threatened with similar treatment (``Prepare for the Angel of Death'') and meet fates neatly foretold by a well-known Jewish prayer. Eventually, the furious energy Krich has poured into her explosive conflict abates, leaving only Detective Jessica Drake's emotional reaction to the news of her own Jewish roots and a routine pattern-murder story surprisingly reminiscent of Fair Game (1993). Though the contenders never miss a chance for partisan posturing, Krich keeps her debate at the boiling point for 200 pages until the inevitable violence simplifies the issues and the story settles into a heartfelt lecture about anti-Semitism. Read full book review >

The psycho du jour is the Curare Killer, whose victims—there are nearly a dozen by the final fade-out—are determined by the moves in a popular board game that his nemesis, Detective Jessie Drake, dopes out a third of the way through Krich's hardcover debut. The use of the game-playing pattern passes belief, but it's more ingenious and compelling than anything else here. The police procedure and the suspense created by that other game between author and reader are competent enough, but the revelation that the killer was psychologically abused by his father is compounded by the news that Jessie was abused by her father too. Even the nephew who's visiting her has been abused—and Jessie's slowness in picking up the clues here doesn't bode well for her later career. Clever in its central conceit, though otherwise forgettable. Read full book review >