Reviews for Feared %28Book%29
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
It had to happen sooner or later: Philadelphia's premier, mostly female legal partnership, Rosato and DiNunzio, gets sued for sex discrimination.Just because Bennie Rosato, Mary DiNunzio, and Judy Carrier have hired John Foxman as an associate doesn't mean they can't be sued by Stephen McManus, Michael Battle, and Graham Madden, who claim that they're not willing to turn the firm any more male than it is. Nick Machiavelli, the lawyer representing the plaintiffs, has gotten evidence that John's felt like an outsider while he's on the job, and since Machiavelli is already holding a grudge against Mary, that's good enough for him. Beginning with the accusatory press conference he convenes, things rapidly go from bad to worse. John quits the firm, leaving Judy to carry the ball alone in pressing their little-guy client London Technologies' case against superrival Home Hacks. Then he gets himself murdered, and Detective Jason Krakoff, of Philadelphia Homicide, quickly ascertains that Judy had been dating John until they broke up, within the hearing of witnesses, an hour or two before the murder. The London Technologies plaintiffs start wavering; the partners can't turn on the television without seeing Machiavelli crow; a predatory freelance reporter starts dogging the heroines; and Judy looks dead in the waterthough Scottoline (Exposed, 2017, etc.) finds little time to develop those last two possibilities because she's preoccupied with tracing the effects of all this stress on Mary's late-term pregnancy. Not even a mother's love could triumph over the dark doings laid out with such professional relishor so you'd think if you didn't know the formula, which dictates a sudden late-breaking turn from incredibly bad luck to incredibly good.Synthetic as all get-out, from the scenes with Mary's oh-so-Italian family to the unlikely events that bring about the amazingly happy ending. But Scottoline, who obviously knows her readers inside out, hits every mark, and the results are never less than pleasurable, down to the last satisfying twist. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
