Mistaken Identity
   Lisa Scottoline
  1999 HarperCollins Pub. Inc. NY USA
   ISBN: 0061096113


Nothing can prepare criminal attorney Bennie Rosato for the moment she enters a maximum-security prison to meet an accused murderer of a highly decorated police detective. A defendant protesting her innocence is not unusual for Bennie, what turns her world upside-down when she sees her client is their uncanny resemblance to each other.

So begins a rough & tumble, hell bent for leather, rip-snorting roller coaster ride of a mad dash toward justice. Maybe!

Lisa Scottoline has been monickered as "The Female John Grisham" by People magazine & I can see why. Not only is her writing style torqued to Mach 1, her story & the fleeting, evocative glimpses of the minds of people zigzagging along that thin legal line is enough to bring a Grisham thriller to mind, in places, it surpasses.

Both the beginning & the ending of this mesmerizing legal thriller are as treacherous as driving while looking in your rearview mirror & about as blood-curdling!

Bennie Rosato's made it - running her own firm of lawyers, enjoying her relationship with her lover as they renovate a building they've just bought & her friendship with her golden retriever. She's at the top of her form, bright, articulate, used to winning her cases & commanding respect in court.

Then she's tapped to return to the Philadelphia Central Corrections facility where an inmate is waiting trial on a year-old murder charge. At first Bennie's reluctance is due to burnout from exposure to that prison, once she meets up with the client who challenges her in a streetwise, hardmouthed manner, declaring them to be twins, Bennie retreats in panic & disbelief.

Notwithstanding her doubts & shock, Bennie takes the case & finds her investigation slithering into dirty waters, hidden threats & the edges of a conspiracy that might involve the very judge presiding over the trial as well as the prosecuting attorney.

I thoroughly enjoyed this fast-paced, short-chaptered, lucid yarn. I liked the all-women law firm & Bennie's two legal assistants; the glimpses of Philadelphia & its boxing circles; the scenes of police loyalties & absent fathers; the conniving sister with a combative facade who may have been a bit of scum but actually had not done the deed, this time.

One tough, exciting read. Made me want to read another from this author.

More from Lisa Scottoline: Everywhere That Mary Went; Rough Justice; Legal Tender; Running from the Law; Final Appeal.
(12/26/99)

Rebecca