‘Case of Lies’ by Perri O’Shaughnessy
Published by Piatkus Books
ISBN 0-7499-3626-6

Lawyer Nina O’Reilly has returned to Lake Tahoe and resumed her legal practice. She feels she should settle down, stay in one place, as much for her son’s sake as her own, now that her relationship with private investigator Paul van Wagoner (see Unlucky at Law, reviewed last issue of Mystery Women) has come to an end. Her old friend, Native American Sandy Whitefeather, is once again working for Nina as secretary and Nina has no trouble in re-establishing her practice. As she says to her masseuse, Chelsi Freeman, she does ‘all sorts of law work, whatever comes in the door.’

And Chelsi has a client for her, her uncle Dave Hanna whose wife Sarah (sister of Chelsi’s father Roger) was shot dead in a robbery at the Aces High Lodge motel two years ago by a man in a ski-mask. There has been no prosecution because the man in the ski-mask has never been found and the three witnesses, present at the scene, vanished at once. Roger had talked Dave into pursuing a civil action for damages against the motel, but Dave has never followed it up and the action is now about to run out of time. . . .

Chelsi talks Nina into taking up the case, which Nina does, although Dave himself is sullen and uncooperative. When Jimmy Brora, owner of the motel, and his lawyer Betty Jo Puckett try to get Dave and Nina to settle, Dave wants to accept, inadequate though the offer is, but Roger and Chelsi are keen to keep the case going. The best way to do this is to find the three witnesses - they had registered at the motel under false names but Wish, Sandy’s son and a budding private

investigator, has found a clue.

We already know who they are: mathematics students Elliott Wakefield, Raj Sumaraj and Silke Kilmer. They, with a fourth girl, Carleen Flint, had formed a gambling syndicate, applying their mathematical skills to win substantial sums and using false names so as not to be banned from casinos. That night at the Lake Tahoe casino they had won a substantial amount, but on their return to the motel were robbed at gunpoint by the man in the ski-mask and then, afraid of being involved, had run away. Since then they have never been back to Tahoe until now when Elliott, needing money for his ill father, returns to the casino, wins and is followed by . . . a man in a ski-mask.

Nina is determined to get the three witnesses to come back to Lake Tahoe and tell the truth about what happened that night even though she has been threatened and her car blown up - perhaps by the man in the ski-mask. But the three are recalcitrant. She comes up with a really crafty wheeze to get them into court.

Then further tragedy strikes. . . .

While all this is going on, Nina has other problems. Her son Bob is behaving in a delinquent manner, connected perhaps with his natural father’s request that he spend the summer with him in Germany. Bob wants to go but Nina wants him to stay with her in Lake Tahoe. Nina doesn’t miss her ex much but she would like another relationship - she has a fling with an old friend which turns out to be just that - a fling.

I enjoyed this book. There’s a lot about mathematics which sounds convincing (at least to those who are, like me, arithmetically challenged) and its importance, in spite of its abstractness, in the world of information technology. The insights into U.S. law are fascinating - how it differs from state to state, how, although based on the same fundamental principles as English law, it differs from that also. And I’m getting to like Nina; there is something spontaneous and genuine about her. Maybe it’s the personality of the author (actually two: Pamela and Mary O’Shaughnessy). Anyhow, A Case of Lies is a really good read.

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Radmila May

Other books by Perri O’Shaughnessy: Move to Strike, Writ of Execution, Unfit to Plead, Presumption of Death, Unlucky in Law.

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