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CASE OF LIES
by Perri O'Shaughnessy
Piatkus, September 2005
320 pages
10.99GBP
ISBN: 0749936266


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Perri O'Shaughnessy (a writing team of two sisters) has produced a series of books featuring lawyer Nina Reilly. The settings have varied within California and this book returns to Lake Tahoe for Nina's office base.

I have enjoyed several previous books in the series but found this one a little less enjoyable. I think it is because there are fewer legal scenes -- indeed there is not really a major court confrontation -- and this is a pity because the legal action scenes were such a good part of the earlier books.

There is, however, plenty of legal action outside major court hearings and the sense of reality in the legal activities shows the usual depth of knowledge of the law from this author.

Nina's private life is always shown in counterpoint to the work she is doing and she is a really three-dimensional character grappling with the needs of a 14-year-old son and her own rather aimless love life.

Her cases escalate into serious trouble with alarming frequency and serious moral issues have to be considered. She is persuaded to take the case of a murder of an innocent bystander committed in the course of a robbery two years previously and never solved. The time lag has meant that the case is in danger of being dropped by the authorities without a suspect being found. Nina's investigation concentrates on establishing the identities of the three students who were the robbery victims and who disappeared after the event.

It is the success she achieves in unravelling the events of the night of the murder that leads into the next phase of the book. The threat of exposure apparently reactivates the murderer and his response is to attempt to silence Nina and those around her with shocking violence.

This is a carefully crafted tale with the students' lives intercut with the progress of Nina's investigation until, eventually, the two coalesce. The twists of the story are many and the final solution is complex and satisfying.

Reviewed by Jennifer S. Palmer, October 2005

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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