Moral Defense

Book two in Clark’s series featuring Samantha Brinkman finds the envelope-pushing L.A. defense attorney adding young Cassie Sonnenberg to her client list after the 15-year-old’s father and brother die from knife wounds. The assumption is that the fatal home break-in was payback after Cassie’s mother Paula, a city councilwoman who was hospitalized and remains in critical condition, helped to pass new anti-gang legislation. But Samantha soon realizes that the motives may be a bit more devious than that. Clark fills her heroine’s narration with caustic wit and breezy, moderately slangy patter that reader Dawe delivers naturally and effortlessly. Samantha’s bottom-line-focused office manager, Michelle, sounds properly exasperated by her boss’s freewheeling and free-spending style. The forlorn Cassie’s responses are whisper-soft and tentative, while another client, a scuzzy drug dealer, and a leader of a California-based drug cartel sound as if they’re fairly bursting with bravado. Dawe is equally effective in finding voices for the novel’s many characters who exist in the attitudinal middle ground between these two extremes. A Thomas & Mercer hardcover. (Nov.)