A good friend gave me a pile of books recently, including several by Perri O'Shaughnessy. This was my introduction to the O'Shaughnessy books, actually written by two sisters. I think I had avoided reading them on the basis of a vague suspicion that the novels would read as if written by a committee. I couldn't have been more wrong. This first book in their Nina Reilly series is seamless and engrossing.
In this debut, Attorney Nina Reilly is suddenly and surprisingly abandoned by her husband (also a lawyer), and not only that, he's taking back his home so she has to get out. So, she and her young son by a previous relationship head to her brother's home at Lake Tahoe while she figures things out. Matt and Andrea and their children are happy to have them stay. And that is followed by another sudden change when Nina rents a nice little office and hangs out her shingle to practice law on her own.
She hires a very practical and also very funny receptionist/secretary and waits in hope for her first client thinking about how many other lawyers there are in this small area. Well, one of the first clients becomes the defendant in Nina's first ever murder trial. Melissa (aka Misty) Patterson is a troubled young woman who seems to have murdered her husband. Not much about the case makes sense and Nina is under pressure from a smarmy big-time attorney to turn the case over to him, but something about Melissa makes Nina unable to turn her away. She digs in her heels, hires one of her ex-husband's old investigators, and starts on a difficult journey to the truth.
It's a fascinating case involving amnesia, shady doings at a casino where Michelle and her husband worked, greed, and infidelity, along with a mysterious event from Michell's childhood at Subic Bay in the Philippines.
I got so involved in it that toward the end I was even ignoring the football games on TV to finish the book. Now that never happens!
I recommend this O'Shaughnessy book at least and I'm anxious to dive into the second in the series. So glad my friend gave me a bunch of them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment