CORRUPT AND ENSNARE

Persevere through some thick, legalistic input about trust funds and some gratuitous gabbiness, and there's a truly twisty solution waiting at the end of young law prof Loren Messing's second case. Loren's beloved mentor, Judge Ben Richmond, is dead of cancer; among his effects--a shoebox full of cash that may prove that the judge took bribes in a hard-fought lawsuit involving an immense family trust (so immense it apparently interests the CIA). Or is someone--seeking to have the lawsuit verdict set aside--trying to flame the dead judge? Loren teams up with a lady shamus to size up the family trust's beneficiaries, thereby running into auto attacks, snakes, and razor blades in the soap. With a nicely distinctive touch (usually law-related) to compensate for each predictable hard-boiled egg, this is a worthy, if slightly wearying, follow-up to Nevins' strong Publish and Perish debut (1975).