CONFLICT OF INTEREST

Rosenberg (Buried Evidence) rolls out a new character but not much more in this crime drama about the manipulation of a developmentally disabled young man accused of robbery. The latest in the New York Times bestselling author's string of female crime stoppers is Joanne Kuhlman, a prosecutor in Southern California trying the case of three childhood buddies who held up a 24-hour market. One of the men, Ian Decker, has a learning disability that makes it questionable whether he even knew that his friends, the rough-and-tumble Rubinsky brothers, were committing a crime. Decker's attorney finally convinces Kuhlman that justice would be better served by having the young man testify against the Rubinskys. By that time, however, Decker has not only disappeared but an anonymous caller to his mother says her son has been killed and buried in the mountains outside Los Angeles. As Kuhlman struggles with the case, she's also dogged by personal problems: her 15-year-old daughter gets pregnant, her son is feeling abandoned, her former husband is in jail on charges of child stealing and embezzlement and she longs for the steadying touch of a good man. Unlike some of her better work, like Interest of Justice, Rosenberg's latest never catches fire. Kuhlman is not a particularly memorable protagonist, and many of the other characters are prone to unrealistic behavior and clunky dialogue. Rosenberg's portrayal of Decker as a young man without the intellectual armor to make it in the world is touching at points, but it can't carry an otherwise lackluster plot. Agent, Peter Miller. National print and TV advertising. (Feb. 6)

Forecast:Rosenberg might sell even more books if she settled on a single, better-developed protagonist, but six million books in print already is nothing to sniff at, and her fans can be counted on to snap up her latest.