Don't Look Now

Well written and fun. Central woman character is strong and likeable, edgy and interesting, too. I like characters who aren't perfect, but somehow manage to persevere.

Picked this up in the mystery section of my local library. I though LLM was a mushy romance novelist = well, she broke out here! Tension, delicious sarcasm, repartee, hunk of a hero and Clare is an angst ridden heroine. Several different side stories kind of keep you on your toes. Set in Arizona, this was not a boring book. Emma and Beatrice are great! Tony is awesome. It has a few laughs and a pretty darn good mystery - diverting enuf that I almost didnt catch the killer until the end. Several lawyers (Clare for one) in this book. I work with a lot like them and can recognize that "innocent until proven guilty" is so hard a concept to accept sometimes. Am looking forward to LLM's Never Look Back, if I can find it.

Attorney Clare Westbrook got a loan from Harvey Kredd to go to law school, however, now that she's finished, she has to work it off with his firm at slave's wages. Then somebody puts a bullet through Harvey's eyes and Janet Baylen, Harvey's second in command, takes over running the firm. She hands Clare the Dr. Netherton Case. The Doctor is a non-caring, butchering plastic surgeon who is being sued by a number of woman who are less than happy with his work. Netherton, it seems, has a crush on Clare or at the very least, thinks she'll be easy as the firm is dependent on his money for its survival. So, the professional side of her life has her down. How about the personal side? Years ago her sister vanished and Clare was convinced her husband James Arren killed her. She testified against him, he went to jail and now he's getting out. He's always clamed he was innocent and now he wants to get custody of his thirteen-year-old daughter Emma, who Clare has been raising. Clare doesn't want Arren to even see the girl, but Emma apparently doesn't believe he killed her mother. Yes, it seems like Clare's life is pretty much not going the way she'd like, she's got the horrid doc to defend, any day she has to face the man she knows killed her sister and her niece is being difficult. Add to the mix ex-lover, cop Tony Sonterra, who is investigating the murder of Kredd, a man the cops all called Krudd, because he got so many crooks off. She'd thought Tony was out of her life and now he's very much in it and she's not happy about it at all. But things can only get better, right? Wrong. Clare goes grocery shopping and finds a woman with a bullet between her eyes behind the wheel of her car when she leaves the store. Then boss Janet is killed when she's sitting at Clare's desk. Next she sees a photo of her vanished sister on her computer screen. She's obviously dead. So now Clare knows for sure, but who sent the picture?

"Now I know what you look like. So pretty. Too bad I have to kill you." The mysterious caller won't identify himself, but attorney Clare Westbrook knows he's serious, because someone has killed her boss, killed a woman who'd been behind the wheel of her car, killed another who'd been sitting at her desk. She's on the killer's list, no doubt about it. But why? She thinks she knows, because her brother-in-law has just been released from prison and it was Clare's testimony that helped put him away. Clare is convinced he killed his wife, her sister, but there was no body, her sister had just vanished from the face of the earth. But her brother-in-law apparently has an alibi. So if it's not him, who is after her? With ex-lover, police officer Tony Sonterra, she struggles to find a killer, before the killer finds her in this excellent mystery that is a perfect blend of romance and thrills.

"Now I know what you look like. So pretty. Too bad I have to kill you." The mysterious caller won't identify himself, but attorney Clare Westbrook knows he's serious, because someone has killed her boss, killed a woman who'd been behind the wheel of her car, killed another who'd been sitting at her desk. She's on the killer's list, no doubt about it. But why? She thinks she knows, because her brother-in-law has just been released from prison and it was Clare's testimony that helped put him away. Clare is convinced he killed his wife, her sister, but there was no body, her sister had just vanished from the face of the earth. But her brother-in-law apparently has an alibi. So if it's not him, who is after her? With ex-lover, police officer Tony Sonterra, she struggles to find a killer, before the killer finds her in this excellent mystery that is a perfect blend of romance and thrills. Reviewed by Sara Hackett, who just adore's her husband Jack Priest's books Ragged Man, Gecko & Night Witch.

Linda Miller peoples her novels with vividly appealing and passionate characters whose lives we care about even after their stories have been told. 'Don't Look Now' is perhaps her best to date. Claire Westbrook is a troubled attorney who has clawed her way out of a difficult and underprivileged childhood to become a competent attorney. She has acheived her dream and now wonders if she has sold her soul in the process. After her grandmother has died and her sister was murdered Claire is left to raise her thirteen year old neice Emma alone and with an enormous financial obligation to her boss, Harvey Kredd. She has spent the last five years helping Kredd get aquitals for his scummy clients. Ned Lench, the beneficiary of her most recent aquital, while on a drunken binge rammed his car into another vehicle killing himself and three others including two young kids and making Claire's controversial aquital infamous in the process. Kredd wants Claire to shoulder the blame when newspeople inundate their offices.Now Kredd has been murdered and Claire is either a prime suspect or the killer's next victim. Her ex boyfriend Tony Sonterra,a cop whose rightful bust Claire had undermined when she got her controversial aquital, is in charge of the murder investigation. He doesn't know wether to accuse Claire or to love her but he is surely going to protect her if only she'd allow him to. Solving the case is a whole lot harder than he expected given the immediate list of possible suspects but Sonterra's not giving up because he must find a killer before the killer gets to Claire.In addition to her other problems Claire learns that Emma's father is being paroled from prison and wants custody of Emma. Claire believes James Arren murdered his wife (Claire's sister and Emma's mother) and she vows never to let him get his hands on Emma. She may reluctantly have to turn to Tony to help convict Arren and protect Emma. You've got to love these characters and you've got to be impressed by the sheer number of twists and turns this story takes as it speeds to its tantalizing climax. Enjoy it, I sure did!