Mortal Sin

Lawyer Jake Lassiter has a rather flexible set of personal ethics. This fourth appearance (after False Dawn ) opens with him in bed with the wife of a client and under threat of disciplinary action by the Florida Bar Association for actions in an earlier case. In his defense, Jake is in hot water professionally because he betrayed a sleazy client to save another man's life. The woman in his bed, Gina Floria, an old flame who has never been extinguished, is less defensible, especially since it was she who urged her husband to hire Lassiter in the first place. It is not totally clear, then, whether it is guilt or lust that drives Jake to want to try and set things right after he becomes convinced that the negligence charges that he helped Nicky Florio beat should probably have been for homicide. Nicky is a real estate developer with plans to rape land in the Everglades that he has leased from an Indian tribe; the dead man was a hotshot environmentalist who froze to death in an apparent drunken stupor in Florio's refrigerated wine cellar. A gruesome post-trial poker game leaves Jake little doubt about Nicky's violent nature and, shortly, on the lam from bribery and murder charges himself. The narrative thereafter is filled with wild chases, improbable escapes and, finally, the revelation of Florio's real purpose in the Everglades. While there's little here to intrigue new readers, fans of the series may get a kick out of Lassiter's tribulations. Mystery Guild main selection. (Feb.)