Perri O'Shaughnessy

this series is consistently fine, and sometimes that's all you need, or all the brain can handle - you don't have to overthink things, and don't have to get a brain cramp puzzling things out. this 4th in the series felt like a bit of a departure. previous stories incorporated the outdoors much more, and this one is primarily office/courtroom-based. though we do get a bit of a taste of the unique lake tahoe environs - an aspect of the series i quite enjoy.) this one ends with a bit of a show more personal cliffhanger for nina... totally suckered me in to move book 5 up the TBR pile! good job o'shaughnessy sisters. good. job. show less

A good friend gave me a pile of books recently, including several by Perri O'Shaughnessy. This was my introduction to the O'Shaughnessy books, actually written by two sisters. I think I had avoided reading them on the basis of a vague suspicion that the novels would read as if written by a committee. I couldn't have been more wrong. This first book in their Nina Reilly series is seamless and engrossing.

In this debut, Attorney Nina Reilly is suddenly and surprisingly abandoned by her husband show more (also a lawyer), and not only that, he's taking back his home so she has to get out. So, she and her young son by a previous relationship head to her brother's home at Lake Tahoe while she figures things out. Matt and Andrea and their children are happy to have them stay. And that is followed by another sudden change when Nina rents a nice little office and hangs out her shingle to practice law on her own.

She hires a very practical and also very funny receptionist/secretary and waits in hope for her first client thinking about how many other lawyers there are in this small area. Well, one of the first clients becomes the defendant in Nina's first ever murder trial. Melissa (aka Misty) Patterson is a troubled young woman who seems to have murdered her husband. Not much about the case makes sense and Nina is under pressure from a smarmy big-time attorney to turn the case over to him, but something about Melissa makes Nina unable to turn her away. She digs in her heels, hires one of her ex-husband's old investigators, and starts on a difficult journey to the truth.

It's a fascinating case involving amnesia, shady doings at a casino where Michelle and her husband worked, greed, and infidelity, along with a mysterious event from Michell's childhood at Subic Bay in the Philippines.
I got so involved in it that toward the end I was even ignoring the football games on TV to finish the book. Now that never happens!

I recommend this O'Shaughnessy book at least and I'm anxious to dive into the second in the series. So glad my friend gave me a bunch of them. show less

I was so painfully disappointed in this novel. The summary on the back of the book makes it seem far more fast paced than it truly was. Boring doesn't even begin to cover the true nature of this story. The first... I'll say 2/3 to 3/4 of the book is all build up with very few answers. Not to mention, the tedium and rehashing of some of the most TEDIOUS points that contribute NOTHING to the story line. Again, and again, and again, Nina mentions how ill prepared she & the firm is for this show more case, how Klaus may be losing his mind and she's not sure she can trust him. I could go on and on.

You'll know when something brought up is important because Nina, the lawyer who's set to prove her client's innocence with VERY little prep and seemingly less legwork done by the firm to whom she's commissioned, will mull it over for about a page or so, turning it over six ways to Sunday. At that point, something will distract her, or some other facet of the case will pop up, she'll have an "ah-ha" moment, but then the reader won't hear about it until she later tells Paul, the PI that she's dating/quasi engaged to, to go follow up on something because of XYZ .

That's another thing that is a little irksome. Diving into Nina and Paul's relationship is... a little unnecessary, if you ask me. Now, to be fair, I haven't read the books reading up to this one, so it may be more natural than it appears, but it seems like their relationship is just something to fill time when there's nothing to move the plot along due to LITERAL travel or a wandering mind while pondering information in a case that seems pretty hopeless.

When things finally start moving (as I said earlier, the last third to quarter of the book), it all feels a little rushed and farfetched. Everything comes together too quickly, too easily, when it does finally happen. Overall, the book is well written, but the story itself is just a dud. Perhaps it's just because I've never read a story completely about a court case before, and I'm not used to the pace of a court case, but this just didn't do it for me. You would think a story about a murder court case would be more interesting. I wasn't necessarily looking for it to be fast paced; based on the size of the book, I knew it wouldn't be, but I was hoping it would move along a little more than it did. Generally speaking, I'll give the genera another shot, but I'm not sure I'm going to be picking up another story with Nina Reilly defending someone in court any time soon. show less

This is the first book in a series featuring Nina Reilly, a lawyer who recently moved from San Francisco to Lake Tahoe, Nevada. One of her first clients is Misty Patterson, a woman with a troubled past who confesses to murdering her husband. She admits she hit him in the head with a statue but isn't clear about how his body ended up at the bottom of the lake. Nina has never tried a murder and tries to convince Misty and her family that she needs to hire a criminal lawyer but they want Nina show more and she can't say no. She hires one of her ex-husband's investigators and tries to find enough evidence to keep Misty out of jail.

I really enjoyed this fast paced legal thriller. Published in 1995, it seems a bit outdated in many places. The characters need to be a bit more developed but that's normal in a debut novel. I see there are now thirteen books in the Nina Reilly series and I definitely plan to pick up another one in the future. It's not John Grisham, but I didn't expect it to be. While a little too long, it was still an entertaining read. show less