MOVE TO STRIKE

A 16-year-old accused of killing her remote, though nearby, uncle brings Tahoe attorney Nina Reilly her latest overripe case.

At the instigation of her no-good friend Scott Cabano, Nicole Zack kayaked over to Dr. Bill Sykes’s house to help herself to the money she was convinced he’d shorted her impecunious mother Daria when he bought 40 acres of supposedly worthless Nevada scrub. Her mission accomplished, Nikki had the bad luck to be on the premises when Uncle Bill was struck down by one of his own trophies, a Samurai sword, and now things look black for her. An obliging eyewitness confirms the physical evidence that places Nikki at the scene just at the worst time, and once an unfriendly judge rules that she can be tried as an adult, only Nina stands between her and a murder conviction. And the legal system isn’t her only enemy, since an anonymous somebody knows what Nikki took from the box in Uncle Bill’s swimming pool and demands its swift return, or else. Embarking on a series of desultory Q&A’s, Nina and her long-suffering suitor, Carmel investigator Paul van Wagoner, find no shortage of other suspects, from Bill’s cosmetic-surgery partner, manmade Adonis Dr. Dylan Brett, to Linda Littlebear, the sodden ex-minister whose daughter died when her nose job went horrifically wrong. But it’s clear early on that the crucial evidence will come from a startling coincidence: Dr. Bill’s beloved son Chris died in a plane crash hundreds of miles away within a few minutes of his father—a plot device the sisters O’Shaughnessy (Acts of Malice, 1999, etc.) turn to ingenious account in a final twist that almost makes up for the overheated climax that delivers it.

For the rest, the forensics and legal procedure are solid, the characters, from the heroine on down, as arrested in adolescent attitudes and relationships as ever. Your move.