Invasion of Privacy

From familiar elements--four mysteriously missing young women; a filmmaker everyone loves to hate; a woman defense attorney with several suitors; the attorney's courageous but unhappy young son--sisters Pamela and Mary O'Shaughnessy have fashioned a thickly plotted and pleasantly baffling second legal thriller. Tahoe-area attorney Nina Reilly was shot at the end of Motion to Suppress (1995). As the increasingly alarming facts of her latest case pile up, she is haunted by memories of that wounding. No less haunting are certain details of her personal past, which Nina's new client, Terry London, an energetically spiteful documentary filmmaker, seems to know as much about as Nina does. Out of that past and into Tahoe comes Kurt Scott, the father of Nina's son, Bob. Almost immediately, Terry is murdered, Kurt is accused of the crime and Nina must assemble his murder defense. To complicate the mystery, Terry had just finished a film about the 12-year-old disappearance of a local teenager who may have been only one in a series of young women killed by the same hand. Did Terry know and abet the killer? As Nina ponders that question, a devastating mid-story revelation plunges her into a difficult ethical dilemma. Fans of the genre will luxuriate in this deft, multileveled tale of legal and criminal treachery, whose pleasures include elegant courtroom sleight-of-hand and the eerily wintry backdrop of Lake Tahoe. And the surprises don't end with the identity of the killer: Nina's last-page choice of a love partner will raise a few eyebrows as well. (Aug.)