Deadly Force

Assistant U.S. attorney Lizzie Scott, the heroine of Shapiro's promising fiction debut, the first in a trilogy, is a complicated woman with a past she would like to keep secret and an uncertain future. Her life takes a dramatic turn when FBI agent John Paul Jones asks her to investigate the killing of a young Hispanic man by a police officer on the force of a small Southern California town. Lizzie accepts the challenge, but as her ambitious colleague, Jack Horton, tells her, "Cop cases are career suicide." She soon finds herself surrounded by sleazy but canny defense lawyers, bad cops, worse cops, good FBI agents, cowardly FBI agents, religious zealots, and hipster coroners%E2%80%94not to mention a flaky childhood friend. The jury selection and trial sequences are particularly entertaining because Lizzie applies the strategies she uses in the boxing ring to her trial work. Shapiro (Lawyers, Liars, and the Art of Storytelling) was himself a federal prosecutor, as well as writer and producer of such iconic TV shows as Boston Legal and The Practice. Readers will look forward to Lizzie's further adventures. (Feb.)