As usual in Scottoline’s recent cases, the opening movement is the best. This time, the half-hearted mystery is upstaged by...
Philadelphia’s favorite all-female law firm is back with a case that poses refreshingly little danger to life, limb or professional ethics.
Nobody would be more surprised than Mary DiNunzio (Killer Smile, 2004, etc.) to hear that she’s the rainmaker at Rosato & Associates. True, her lawsuits on behalf of neighbors with bad roofs or schoolchildren with special needs, and her legal advice to the Dean Martin Fan Club of South Philly when they contemplate action against the Sinatra Social Society, will never make her rich. But her billable hours are through the roof, and Judy Carrier, her associate and best bud, thinks Bennie Rosato should make her a partner—until Trish Gambone walks through the door. Mary’s high-school nemesis has become a beautician who’s finally found a bigger bully than she is: low-level Mob soldier Bobby Mancuso, who alternates between skimming from the heroin payments that pass through his hands and beating the tar out of the woman he hopes to make his wife. Trish won’t run away from her abuser; she won’t apply for a protective order against him; she won’t do anything except wail that Bobby’s going to kill her on her birthday, which happens to be that very day, and that Mary is no help. Trish vanishes overnight, leaving Mary with a major case of guilt and an immediate future crystal-clear to fans of the Rosato franchise (Daddy’s Girl, 2007, etc.)—trouble with the cops, trouble with her client’s family and Mean Girl friends and trouble with her boss, who gives her an ultimatum: Forget about Trish or leave the firm. If you can’t predict Mary’s choice, you must be new around here.
As usual in Scottoline’s recent cases, the opening movement is the best. This time, the half-hearted mystery is upstaged by Mary’s pleasantly unlikely romance.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-083320-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2007
Hoag finishes her crossover from sexy soft-cover romance to psychosexual thriller with this tale of tough Cajun loners looking for love in unlikely places. Heroine Annie Broussard is a deputy with the sheriff's office in Partout Parish in southern Louisiana. An orphan who's working hard to make detective, she's also devoted to getting rid of the sexual predators who victimize women. But just as her career seems to be looking up, Annie breaks an unwritten police law: She arrests a fellow officer, Nick Fourcade, when she finds him beating up a murder suspect. Annie should have let Fourcade kill him, say both her colleagues and the bayou parish citizens. After all, the suspect, Marcus Renard, had supposedly stalked Pam Bichon, a single mother. He'd driven stakes through her hands, raped her, killed her, eviscerated her, then left her wearing only a feathered Mardi Gras mask in a deserted cottage on Pony Bayou. Why not kill him? Switching his obsession from Pam to Annie, he maintains that he's innocent and begs Annie to help him. Working with Fourcade, who's suspended but still obsessed with the case, she seeks evidence to put the troubled Marcus legally behind bars. Meanwhile, someone's raping Louisiana women, and Marcus is too injured to be the perp. Is it Annie's lazy, mean-spirited colleague Stokes? Or Pam's husband, involved with a New Orleans racketeer from Fourcade's past? As Mardi Gras approaches, Annie, a cute kid who does 50 chin-ups a day and has an addiction to candy bars, wrestles with Fourcade's dangerous sexuality—fortunately a losing battle—and with the evil presence of deranged male predators that haunts so many recent suspense novels. Hoag (Guilty as Sin, 1996, etc.) is always a good gritty read, but this time a lack of sustained emotional tension makes the novel a long ride on soft tires.
Pub Date: April 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-553-09960-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1997
Not Reichs’s best, but a meticulously laid-out case that offers a deeper look into her heroine’s personal life.
Several troubling cases await forensic anthropologist Dr. Temperance Brennan (Bones to Ashes, 2007, etc.) back home in Charlotte, N.C.
Tempe Brennan’s personal life is in tatters. Her love, a Montreal cop called Ryan, has gone back to his lover in hopes of stabilizing their troubled daughter; Tempe’s ex is about to marry a much younger woman; and her daughter Katy is utterly bored with her job. A call to examine a skull found in a hidden floor space plunges Tempe into a case that may involve ritual murder. The skull and some kettles containing bones and various fetishes suggesting Santería or some other alternative religion may tie in with two headless bodies, one found floating in a river and another marked with Satanic symbols. Furious when a local politician uses the cases as an excuse to whip up hostility against little-understood religions, Tempe is far from convinced that the Wiccan who is arrested is guilty. When Rinaldi, one of the detectives she’s working with, is killed in a drive-by, Tempe falls off the wagon but soldiers on, mortified, until she finally makes the connections between the crimes that lead to a close call with death and a startling conclusion.
Not Reichs’s best, but a meticulously laid-out case that offers a deeper look into her heroine’s personal life.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-7432-9438-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2008
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
