Description:
A former priest and now a practicing lawyer in Chicago, David J. Walker obviously knows a thing or two about how people behave. That knowledge enlivened his books about a private eye called Mal Foley (Applaud the Hollow Ghost), and now adds pleasure and promise to the start of a new series. Kirsten and Dugan are a married couple who met at the police academy; she's now a law-school dropout working as a private investigator, while he's taken over his father's lucrative but depressing personal-injury law practice. "She knew Dugan enjoyed his self-crafted image as a slightly tarnished, run-of-the-mill lawyer who exhausted his store of courage by sparring with insurance adjusters on the telephone. A comfortable image, and maybe he was tempted to believe in it. But the fact was that Dugan never backed off from any real challenge." That admiration is mutual, so Dugan lets himself be dragged along by Kirsten on a case involving a sleazy lawyer about to be disbarred, a mobbed-up adult bookstore called Cousin Freddy's, and a missing exotic dancer known as Rita Ranchero. Both lead characters have distinct and well-developed personalities that mesh and occasionally clash, just like real couples we all know. If Walker can avoid a certain tendency toward coyness, this could be the beginning of a long and interesting relationship. --Dick Adler
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