Connors's latest trip to the courtroom (after Maximum Security
) follows busy, resilient Cape Cod attorney Marty Nickerson and her partner in love and law Harry Madigan as they handle two cases in which their clients' stories are highly suspicious. Marty is representing U.S. Sen. from the state of Massachusetts Charles Kendrick, whose attractive, talented 25-year-old staffer Michelle Forrester mysteriously disappears. Harry Madigan, meanwhile, is appointed public defender for recently released young con Derrick Holliston, who pleads self-defense in the brutal Christmas Eve murder of Fr. Francis Patrick McMahon, claiming the priest made untoward sexual advances. Both cases explode: Kendrick, who had a heated love affair with Michelle, admits that he was with her the night before she vanished, and Holliston commits "tactical suicide" with a short-lived decision to represent himself in court. A mad scramble ensues to assemble witnesses for the Kendrick case just as Michelle's body washes up in picturesque Pleasant Bay, an implicating quarter mile from the senator's estate. Connors smartly keeps her sleuthing tight and her courtroom acrobatics succinct for another excellent, fast-moving courtroom drama headed by a plucky, energetic heroine. Agent, Nancy Yost. (July)
