Nina's not sleeping much these days. She's recovering from a great loss, haunted by a killer who may still be tracking her, and working on a tough new case. Her client is a sixteen-year-old girl charged with first-degree murder. Nikki Zack is a rebel, a thief, and the best friend of Nina's son, Bob. Did she steal something from her uncle, a prominent plastic surgeon, and then kill him with an ancient samurai sword?
To help find out, Nina calls in private investigator Paul Van Wagoner, her ex-lover and constant ally, whose bravado doesn't betray his own sleepless nights. As they work through the twisting lies surrounding Nikki, it becomes brutally clear to Nina that she must pull an ace out of her sleeve in the courtroom to save her client, and solve the mystery surrounding Paul to save herself.
The fifth novel featuring defense attorney Nina Reilly takes the widowed lawyer and her associates on a fox chase though the backwoods and courtrooms of California and Nevada, and into a family's dark past. Laural Merlington's voice is smooth and gentle--perhaps too much so for this witty, fast-paced thriller--and better suited to romance or children's writing. Her characters are distinct and fully defined, but the narrative voice she provides comes across as flat, sometimes undermining the writing. But the action speaks for itself, and listeners will be thrilled by the investigation and courtroom high jinks as Nina defends her son's best friend, a rebellious teenager accused of killing her high-profile uncle. S.E.S. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine
About the Author
Perri O'Shaughnessy is the pen name for sisters Mary and Pamela O'Shaughnessy, who both live in California. They are the authors of eleven bestselling Nina Reilly novels as well as a collection of short crime fiction, Sinister Shorts.
