Sweet Jiminy

Gore's watered-down foray into The Help territory features a Southern-born law student whose attempts to solve a decades-old hate crime stir up predictable outrage. After a bike accident, Jiminy Davis takes a leave of absence from law school to head home to Fayeville, Miss., home of her beloved grandmother, Willa. Distraction presents itself in the form of Bo, the med school%E2%80%93bound nephew of Willa's housekeeper, Lyn, until Jiminy stumbles on a long-buried tragedy: her namesake, Lyn's daughter, was killed along with her father in a suspicious accident that was never investigated by the local police. Over her grandmother's objections, Jiminy digs into Fayeville history and, with the help of a scruffy out-of-town lawyer, confronts an ugly truth. Though it contains most of the elements of a legal thriller, Gore's latest (after Sammy's House) lacks the suspense needed to bind the story, while Jiminy's na%C3%AFvet%C3%A9 supplies a weak motivator for dragging out a fairly straightforward mystery. (May)