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COURTING TROUBLE
by Lisa Scottoline
HarperCollins, July 2003
425 pages
6.99 GBP
ISBN: 0007140673


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

What would you do if you picked up a newspaper and saw your own picture on the front page as a murder victim?

Anne Murphy fled California when the man who tried to kill her for rejecting his advances was sentenced to two years in prison for aggravated assault. She signed on as a new associate with Rosato & Associates, the women's Philadelphia law firm whose other lawyers have been the protagonists in Scottoline's previous books, and buried herself in work. Her creativity and daring are serving her well in her most important case yet, when she takes off for the Jersey shore to avoid the Fourth of July noise and hoopla in her neighborhood and concentrate on her preparations for jury selection. That was the suggestion of the woman on the adjacent exercise machine at the gym, a quiet artist who agreed to take care of her cat.

When Anne reads that her face has been blown off by a shotgun blast in her doorway, she knows that her housesitter must be dead and suspects that her erotomanic nemesis is loose, but all of the officials involved in her case in California are unavailable, off on the long holiday weekend. The Philadelphia police are stretched thin by the need to bodyguard the secretary-general of the United Nations, who's in town to receive a medal, and a gaggle of TV actors, rap musicians, and sundry other stars, who are in town for a group reading of the Declaration of Independence, as well as handle crowd control for the million or so celebrants expected for the festivities. Anne is a social isolate estranged from her minimal family and emotionally unconnected to her new coworkers and neighbors.

So Anne investigates her own murder.

This introduction sounds grim, but the book isn't. On the character level, it's about an emotionally battered woman finding strength in herself to reach out to other people and become part of the human family, as well as to battle her adversary. In setting, it's perfect, from the steamy shore to a sleazy Admiral Wilson Boulevard motel to gentrified trinity houses to a gay bar to the federal courthouse to a comfy South Philly rowhouse. Anne has made it her business to learn all about the erotomania of her oppressor, and Scottoline has made it her business to explain stalkers' obsessions clearly but not didactically. This is also a very funny book. In the opening chapter, the smart and reckless protagonist argues a motion to suppress that Christopher Brookmyre could have plotted.

What is there to not like about this book? Well, I wasn't prepared for the final flip of the plot twist, and I think the book could have done without the last chapter. Also, readers who are sensitive to energizer bunnies or femjep may find the protagonist's recklessness too reckless. Overall, though, it's hard to fault a book that's exciting, heartwarming, and hilarious.

Reviewed by Joy Matkowski, August 2003

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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