MORTAL SIN

After his wild excursion into international intrigue in False Dawn (1993), Dolphin-trained lawyer Jake Lassiter returns to the courtroom to defend another of his guilty-as-hell clients in a negligence suit that blossoms into the civil equivalent of a murder trial—and then sets Jake against his own murderous client. Originally, environmental activist Peter Tupton's widow seems to be claiming only that Tupton's freezing death in shady developer Nicky Florio's wine cellar was due to Florio's actionable inattention. As the case grinds through trial, though, and Melinda Tupton tells of her last chat with her husband—a phone call in which he talked feverishly of finding some unspecified smoking-gun papers in Florio's bedroom- -Jake realizes that prissy H.T. Patterson, the plaintiff's attorney, is out to convict Florio of murder and collect millions in non- insurable damages. And this isn't even the worst of Jake's problems, since he can't just walk away from Florio, even after the trial—once the client makes it clear that he knows all about the on-again/off- again affair Jake's recently renewed with Florio's smoldering wife Gina—even when Florio has one of his henchmen kill Gina's latest lover before Jake's eyes, demand that Jake deliver a hefty bribe (on behalf of Florio's plan for rocket-paced development—condos, casino gambling, etc.—on the Micanopy Indian reservation) to state's attorney Abe Socolow, and then frames Jake for extortion and murder, leaving him on the run from the few Miami police officers who aren't in Florio's pocket already. Jake's open-minded approach to the practice of law makes for more knockabout entertainment—though, here, it's less riotous and satisfyingly twisty than earlier adventures.