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FORCING AMARYLLIS by Louise Ure

FORCING AMARYLLIS

by Louise Ure

Pub Date: June 20th, 2005
ISBN: 0-89296-009-4

A trial consultant risks life and career to pursue the man who assaulted her sister and left her for dead.

Ever since the rape of her sister Amaryllis seven years ago, Tucson trial consultant Calla Gentry has confined her jury profiling skills to civil cases. She spends much of her free time running down leads in Amy’s still unsolved case. Amy, a student nurse at the time of the assault, receives round-the-clock care at Saguaro Nursing Home, placing a serious strain on Calla’s finances. So when tough boss Jessica Marley insists that Calla work on the rape-and-murder trial of wealthy playboy rancher Raymond Cates, she’s in no position to refuse. During her first meeting with slick Cates and his high-profile lawyer, Kevin McCullough, Calla notices several similarities between the Cates case and the m.o. of Amy’s assailant, a serial rapist known as the “Animal.” With the help of handsome private investigator Anthony Strike, Calla begins digging deeper into Cates’s alibi for his current prosecution and tracks down the Animal’s other victims to see if they can identify him. The more she learns, the more convinced she becomes of Cates’s guilt. But can she keep Jessica in the dark about her probe and stay one step ahead of Cates’s powerful father George?

A warm first-person narrative and a confident tone but not much of a mystery. Fascinating passages about jury selection set Ure’s debut apart.