Continuing her run of coming up with the best hooks in the legal intrigue trade (Rough Justice, 1997, etc.), Scottoline tosses Philadelphia lawyer Bennie Rosato her most challenging client—an accused cop-killer who claims she’s Bennie’s identical twin. And maybe she is. Bennie’s ailing mother is too far gone to confirm or deny Alice Connolly’s incredible tale of separation soon after birth; the supporting evidence is inconclusive; and while Bennie is waiting for the DNA results, there’s the little matter of taking over, on a week’s notice, Connolly’s botched defense on the capital charge of killing her live-in lover, Officer Anthony Della Porta. Bennie, whose firm specializes in prosecuting naughty cops, couldn’t expect much help from Della Porta’s associates even if they weren’t, as Connolly insists, crooks and drug dealers, cogs in a conspiracy dedicated to putting her away for good. Meantime, her fellow inmates can’t wait for her to be found guilty; they’re eager to sentence her to a much quicker death. The situation is so desperate that Bennie toys with the idea of mounting a twin defense, changing her hair and dress in order to double herself with the unlovable defendant. She changes her mind, but Connolly doesn’t. Since Bennie won’t ape her style, she starts to ape Bennie’s: “The defendant had become the lawyer; the twins had traded places.” Meantime, Bennie’s getting clobbered in court by rulings so slanted that she’s got to wonder if Judge Harrison Guthrie isn’t part of the conspiracy too. All this while she’s trying to face up to the possibility that hard-bitten Connolly really is her long-lost twin sister. Can Scottoline do justice to the whodunit, the courtroom thriller, and the buried family romance in a mere 496 pages? Of course not; the thriller wins in a walk. But even the most skeptical fans will be impressed at how tightly Scottoline knots them all together in her biggest book yet.
Pub Date: March 12, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-018747-6
Page Count: 496
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1999
A very aptly titled gripper (received too late for a full review) that will have Grisham slapping his wife’s wrist in pique over the breakfast toast when he discovers Meltzer’s plot for his second novel (The Tenth Justice, 1997). Attorney Jared Lynch’s Manhattan firm takes on the defense of a psychopath and hands the case over to Jared, who soon finds that he’ll die if he loses this case. Meanwhile, in the assistant district attorney’s office, Jared’s wife Sara has the same case passed down to her and a similar stricture applies: She’ll also die if she loses. And further, although prosecutor and defense attorney sleep together, the law forbids any trading of information between them, despite the lethal warnings that neither can tell the other about. To top all this off, author Meltzer is an attorney himself, which lends the novel’s dialogue a sparkling undercurrent of real-life chitchat, not to mention the mutual saber-sharpening that readers will quickly pick up on and enjoy as a bonus. (Author tour)
Pub Date: May 13, 1998
ISBN: 0-688-15090-X
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1998
Coben can always be relied on to generate thrills from the simplest premises, but his finest tales maintain a core of logic...
Another one of Coben’s got-it-all New Jersey dads finds out that his wonderful wife has been hiding a whopper of a secret from him—a secret whose trail leads to even more monstrous revelations.
“We’re living the dream,” Tripp Evans assures Adam Price at their sons’ sixth-grade lacrosse all-star team draft—lacrosse, for crying out loud. But the dream is already slipping from Adam’s grasp as Tripp speaks. Minutes earlier, a young stranger who declined to give his name had sidled up to Adam and informed him that his wife had faked her first pregnancy, which had supposedly ended in a miscarriage. When an agonized Adam confronts Corinne with the story, she doesn’t deny it. Instead, she pleads for more time and promises that she’ll tell all over a restaurant dinner the following day. Adam, who’s clearly never read anything by Coben (Missing You, 2014, etc.), agrees, and Corinne checks out of her high school teaching job and vanishes, pausing just long enough to text Adam: “YOU TAKE CARE OF THE KIDS. DON’T TRY TO CONTACT ME. IT WILL BE OKAY.” Days pass, and it’s not OK. Adam’s two boys (are they really even his? should he run DNA tests?) keep asking where their mom is. There’s no word from Corinne, who won’t answer Adam’s texts. Her cellphone places her somewhere near Pittsburgh. Rumors about her start to percolate through the lacrosse league. And, although it’ll take Adam quite a while to find this out, a murder in far-off Ohio has implications for Corinne’s disappearance even more disturbing than anything Adam’s imagined.
Coben can always be relied on to generate thrills from the simplest premises, but his finest tales maintain a core of logic throughout the twists. This 100-proof nightmare ranks among his most potent.Pub Date: March 24, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-525-95350-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2015
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