BLOOD RED, SNOW WHITE

A husband-and-wife pair's first novel in which up-and-coming, moderately honest Manhattan lawyer Alec Anton interrupts his defense of two clients—caught with their hands in the till—to search reluctantly for an alluring neighbor's drug-involved son. Alec's protests that he doesn't do missing persons—he just wants to be left alone to plea-bargain white-collar looters Felix Schwartzberg and Jimmy Gallagher out of prison time—don't stand a chance weighed against his divorced neighbor Lee Hastings's fabulous body, suitably and frequently deployed. But Lee's missing son Noah, barely out of his teens, is big trouble, as even slow-witted Alec gradually realizes: Noah was not only the school chum of Philip Ochoa, scion of the fabulously wealthy Colombian flower-importing family, but also the advance man for the Ochoas' multimillion-dollar American cocaine trade. And when Noah is linked to corporate blue-blood Trumbull Oakes, a pivotal figure in Felix and Jimmy's scam, the chase for the missing boy seems to be heating up. But just then, halfway through, Noah turns up dead—and the story trails off into a deeper mess than Lee's landed Alec in, as his obsessive quest for Noah turns into a series of frantic maneuvers against the bad guys, the police, and his own partners, determined to shut him out—with Lee putting in periodic appearances to remind you why Alec got involved in the first place. In due course: Alec gets seduced by a cocaine-snorting associate in his firm who lodges an affidavit against him; Felix gets blown away; Alec's US attorney buddy Vinny Santorini suppresses Alec's evidence against Oakes and puts the DEA on Alec's tail; Alec sends a copy of the evidence to Ochoa Senior; Oakes gets blown away; and Noah's killer comes after Alec and Lee in a ludicrous finale. Any questions? A feverish fantasia on themes from tormented-attorney fiction and newspaper stories on drugs and financial malfeasance.