A HOPELESS CASE

Here, the author moves away from her frequent 20's milieu (Peril Under the Palms, etc.) and into the life of one Jane da Silva, expatriate widow of a racing-car driver, brought back from Europe to her Seattle hometown by a legacy from her uncle Harold. To inherit the big bucks involved, Jane must prove she can continue his private charity: the finding and successful resolution of cases of true injustice—hopeless cases. One falls into her lap, however, through seedy but honest lawyer p.i. Calvin Mason: teenaged, gifted pianist Leonora, daughter of burnt-out ex-hippie Kenny Martin and long-dead Linda Donnelly, has no money to further her career. Linda had given an inherited quarter of a million to her cult of the moment—the Fellowship of the Flame—and died of drowning soon after. Jane determines to recover the money and sets out to trace the now-defunct Fellowship's chief guru, upsetting lots of people along the way—one of them to the point of murder—but finally achieving her goal in a roundabout way. Despite all of this, the trustees ruling on Jane's worthiness to inherit decide she's still on trial, and the reader can envision a series of hopeless cases to come. Manages to stay just this side of silliness and be mildly entertaining in the process.