Copyright 2015 by Smart Blond, LLC. Published by St Martin’s Press, New York.
This is billed as #3 in Scottoline’s “Rosato & Denunzio” series. Well, she must have reset the counter after Denunzio became a partner because there are a whole bunch of Rosato books that precede this one.
For those of you not familiar with Scottoline’s barrister heroine, Bennie Rosato, let me make the introduction. She is a tough-as-nails Philadelphia lawyer who runs a law firm that is nearly all female. She has taken on a token male flunky and also employs a male investigator, but all the lawyers are female. As a result her stories are strong on estrogen and things like feelings and relationships. You know… chick stuff. This sometimes seems overdone and can make me, as a male reader, feel like I am left out of the joke. But Scottoline is a skilled writer and some of her plots are quite interesting.
Like this one.
In some of her previous books, all romance and sex was the province of her younger colleagues. Bennie herself seemed asexual and left me wondering, whether she, as a tough woman running an all-female business, might be a closet lesbian. Sure, she had a boyfriend, but you know how that goes.
Well, I don’t have to wonder anymore. She is a full-fledged heterosexual who both falls in love and falls in bed with a man in this book. But the nascent romance is nipped in the bud by tragic events and they break up within a week after meeting. The disrupting events involve the families of two teen boys who were jailed for a middle school scuffle, a simple conflict that didn’t seem to justify incarceration. And it is later discovered that the judge was benefiting financially from throwing innocent youngsters into jail Judicial corruption which ruined many lives.
Fast forward 15 years. Bennie volunteers to defend a young man accused of murder. He is one of the young men involved in the middle school scuffle. The victim is the other. Because her lost love interest is the uncle of the victim, they are thrown together again, in a not very romantic way, on opposite sides of a murder trial.
See the opportunity for conflict? That is what this book is all about – unimaginably intense conflict, tragic loss and hope for redemption. I would call it “gripping” as it really grabbed me.
My one complaint is that the “smoking gun” in this case was discovered in a video clip the night before Bennie had to mount a defense. This case took 6 months to get to trial. It seems like this information – and its significance – should have been seen much sooner. But a “night before” discovery is more dramatic.
But that is a minor complaint. Overall, the book was very satisfying. And I was very happy to learn that a hard-as-nails lady lawyer can fall in love.
9 out of 10.