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Fiction. Mystery. HTML:It's been a long time since she solved her first "hopeless case" and Jane da Silva is running out of money. Her Uncle Harold's bizarre will provides her with a handsome income if she successfully runs his Foundation for Righting Wrongs and pleases its crusty old board of directors.Through Calvin Mason, the young attorney who befriends her, she finds a new hopeless case. A real hopeless case. Kevin Shea is a teenage drug addict convicted of holding up a pharmacy and show more killing the druggist's wife. Kevin is such a low-life even his mother is convinced he's guilty and glad he's behind bars.
Now it appears there was a witness to the murders, a young woman whose prescription was being filled at the time of the murder. The witness might be able to prove that Kevin is innocent of the murder. Jane learns that four women with the same name all live in remote areas of Vancouver Island, one of them the missing witness. There's someone else who wants to find the missing witness too, someone who isn't afraid to turn to murder when Jane gets too close for comfort. Jane's breath-taking and dangerous romp through the northern wilderness leads her to the Tip Top Club, a stripper bar, where she faces down the clever killer and wraps up a satisfactory hopeless case, proving that everyone deserves justice. show less
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When Calvin Mason, the lawyer Jane da Silva met in an earlier case, tells Jane about a possible “hopeless case” that she might pursue, he doesn’t think she will really follow through on it: after all, the case concerns a man convicted of the murder of a pharmacist’s wife - and Calvin, the man’s defense lawyer, is convinced of his guilt. But a juror on the case has come to him with a detail that has troubled her since the conviction, a scene-of-crime photograph that seems to suggest that there may have been a witness to the crime. When she learns that tracking down the witness involves traveling up to Vancouver Island, Jane is quite happy to go, but it seems that she is not the only person looking for the girl…. This is the show more second of four novels featuring Jane da Silva, a 37-year-old widow who will come into a fortune if she can fulfill the requirements of her uncle’s will and solve a seemingly hopeless case of injustice. I very much like Jane, although she’s a bit whiny here off and on, and I like the relationship between her and Calvin, although that seems to be going nowhere fast. Set in the 1990s, it’s a bit dated by now (I doubt that young people today even have a concept of public pay phones, the importance of which looms large in this story), but still entertaining; recommended. show less
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21+ Works 1,005 Members
Kathrine Kristine Beck was born in Seattle, Washington, on September 22, 1950. She received a B.A. from San Francisco State University. Before becoming a full-time mystery writer, Beck wrote advertising copy and edited a trade magazine. At one point she also sold radio air time, an experience she was later to include in We Interrupt this show more Broadcast, a mystery set in a small, classical radio station. Beck's mysteries are usually written in a light-hearted vein. Her first mystery, Death in a Deck Chair, is an entertaining period piece set in the 1920s on a transatlantic ocean liner. The two main characters from that book, debutante college student Iris Cooper and brash young reporter Jack Clancy, reappear in some of her later books, including Murder in a Mummy Case and Peril Under the Palms. Another recurring character is Jane da Silva, a middle-aged widow who becomes involved with various mysteries after she inherits her uncle's estate and, along with it, his business, which was helping desperate people find a solution to their problems. Books in this series include A Hopeless Case and Amateur Night. Other books by Beck include The Revenge of Kali-Ra; Bad Neighbors; Cold Smoked; Electric City; Young Mrs. Cavendish and the Kaiser's Men; Unwanted Attentions; Without a Trace; Death of a Prom Queen, which was written under the pseudonym Marie Oliver, and The Tell-Tale Tattoo. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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