Very quickly: This is what you might get if you successfully mixed James Ellroy ("L.A. Confidential") and John Grisham ("The Firm"). It's a neat, gritty, intricate piece of mystery about a lawyer who really wants to believe his client didn't commit the murder. He's pretty sure she didn't... pretty sure...

I liked this one because I figured out the killer's identity, but only after reading nearly the whole thing, and after giving it lots of thought. To me, that's the best kind of mystery. It's not as violent as Ellroy, nor as austere as Grisham, but it has the feel of the better parts of both those writers, blending hard facts about the crime and those it affects with slick law-practice maneuvering. Good fun.