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Nancy Taylor Rosenberg Buried Evidence
Hyperion 2000 0786866195 / 9780786866199 Bookclub Edition Fine near fine
0786866195 9.5 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches Amazon.com Flawed heroes (or heroines) are nothing new in fiction. But Lily Forrester, the protagonist of Nancy Rosenberg's new novel, Buried Evidence, has a few skeletons in her closet that rattle alarmingly when her ex-husband threatens to open the door to her past. Unless Lily uses her legal connections (she's a Santa Barbara district attorney) to get him out of a drunken vehicular homicide charge in Los Angeles, he'll rat on her to the authorities. To further complicate matters, Lily's daughter Shana, a UCLA student, is the only other suspect in the hit-and-run incident. When her ex is murdered shortly after Lily bails him out, Shana, who found her father's body, is again a suspect. And Shana's being stalked by the psychopath who raped both her and her mother six years ago. Add a wrongful murder, a retired cop who lied to protect Lily, and a rich, handsome, successful lawyer who's still in love with her even though he knows her darkest secrets (or maybe because of them), and you have enough ingredients to keep this racy mystery moving a lot faster than traffic on the California freeways. Rosenberg has a deft hand with pacing and plot, although her characters seem varnished with a moral gloss that's as thin as their emotional complexity. The relationship between Lily and Shana seems particularly one-dimensional given the traumatic events they've shared. Lily's moral compromises are never resolved, even after her lover clears her of a murder she did, in fact, commit. But Rosenberg's fans won't quibble with the outcome, and the former prosecutor's latest suspense thriller will doubtless win her a few more. --Jane Adams From Publishers Weekly Rosenberg cannot be accused of pandering to the reader. One is never sure who to root for in her latest kinetic crime thriller, as usual set in Southern California. The protagonist of Mitigating Circumstances, feisty, red-headed Lily Forrester, formerly of the Ventura DA's office, is now DA in Santa Barbara. Her ex-husband, John Forrester, who has been living with their 18-year-old daughter, Shana, is losing his battle with the bottle and has been arrested for vehicular manslaughter. He was driving Shana's car when he hit and killed a young manAa student, like Shana, at UCLA. John blackmails Lily into bailing him out of jail, bartering Lily's secret in an effort to escape prosecution. (Six years before, Shana was brutally raped while Lily was forced to look on, and Lily shot and killed the wrong man in retaliation.) The real rapist has recently been released on parole and is once again stalking the two women. Enter Lily's former love-interest, Richard Fowler, who resurfaces in her life as the lawyer for a man Lily is prosecuting for attempting to poison his handicapped daughter. Richard ends up representing Lily (after dumping his live-in girlfriend) when the police attempt to sort out the many subplots and solve a six-year-old crime no one really cares about. Rosenberg addresses questions of conscience: the man Lily shot was himself a serial killer. Should she be prosecuted for bumping him off? Prone to hysteria, whining and selfishness, the characters presented here are barely likable. Still, the plot presents a compelling moral dilemma, the action is fast-paced and the pages turn easily. $300,000 ad/promo; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club selection; author appearances in Los Angeles and New York. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Price:
4.69 USD
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