Ditzy DiNunzio Rides Again
Written: Dec 23 '04
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Fun, as always
Cons: deus ex machina ending, wanting to smack DiNunzio upside the head for bein' a dope
The Bottom Line: Scottoline's latest, featuring goody-two-shoes Mary DiNunzio, is as fun as the rest of the series, sort of cirque du soleil meets Robert B. Parker.
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| scmrak's Full Review: Lisa Scottoline - Killer Smile |
Some years back I had the misfortune of making the acquaintance of the Arapaho County, Colorado, commissioner of juries. It's not that Maddie wasn't a nice person, oh, no, it's just that for some unknown reason she kept calling me for jury duty every six months, just like clockwork (I don't mind doing my civic duty, but I'm also happy to share the wealth, if you get my drift). After having made the final cut for the jury a couple of times, I came to a startling realization. Startling, that is, for someone whose sole exposure to courtrooms during his formative years had been watching over the shoulders of Perry Mason and Ben Matlock, among others. You know what I figured out? It's all a huge lie: lawyers are nowhere near as smart as they'd have us think. Just sit through a trial or two up in that jury box and you'll figure that out for yourself. Or, if you're not too keen on missing work to serve as a juror for ninety cents an hour or so, you could just read a Lisa Scottoline book or two - I'd say Killer Smile would convince you that all those high-falutin' legal eagles are really more like legal beagles.
Alas, Poor Amadeo
Mary DiNunzio's in love. The only problem with this is that she has a crush on her latest client, or, more properly, she has a crush on the picture of the man whose estate she represents. Amadeo Brandolini has, unfortunately, been dead for sixty years. Perhaps that's a blessing - if he were alive, Mary would be in love with a centenarian... Brandolini died, apparently at his own hand, while interred with other "enemies of the state" - Italian, German, and Japanese immigrants - in western Montana, thousands of miles from his Philadelphia home. More than sixty years later, Mary's thoughts are filled with questions of reparations and puzzles like, "Whatever happened to Amadeo's three fishing boats?"
At least for starters, that's all she's thinking about. But then the break-ins begin, followed by a couple of beatings and a random murder or two, and Mary's nose gives a distinctive rabbit-like twitch: she smells something fishy (wait: do rabbits eat fish?). A first-ever trip to Montana gives the normally timid Mary the impetus to "cowgirl up," so the perpetual Catholic Girls School graduate decides to break a few rules and take out the trash. What's the story behind the mysterious Gio Saracone's family fortune? what are the mysterious little pieces of paper left behind in Brandolini's meager possessions, the ones with the lumpy circles drawn on them? whose lock of hair is that? and most of all, who's trying to kill meek, mild, Mary? and why?
Rosato and Associates Rides Again. Yee-hah!
Philly lawyer Lisa Scottoline's eleventh Rosato and Associates mystery tracks a week or two of perpetual goody-two-shoes Mary DiNunzio's life, including a string of blind dates and numerous visits to her childhood home. DiNunzio's sometime partner in crime, Judy Carrier, lends her usual able assistance, and head honcha Benedetta "Bennie" Rosato looks in on her charges from time to time; but this one is Mary's show all the way Third associate Anne Murphy - too beautiful by half to be a lawyer - appears only in a single reference. Hmmm? What's with Murphy, anyway? A couple of repeating characters - office manager Marshall and Mary's extremely Italian parents - are joined by a standard set of villains. There's Mr. Muscle, Mr. Greed, Ms. Trophy Wife, and Mr. Hired Killer; all straight out of central casting except that Ms. Trophy Wife's a brunette instead of a blonde. Mr. Muscle even has a case of 'roid rash...
Plot-wise, Scottoline's taken a leap onto the attorney version of the cold case bandwagon, tracking down files and witnesses from long before anyone at Rosato and Associates was even a gleam in daddy's eye. The question of WWII reparations for internees has been approached before (by Sara Paretsky, among others), although not necessarily in the snoopy girl lawyer sub-sub-genre. The tale that Scottoline concocts is believable in her usual goofy sort of way, and there's no denying that DiNunzio's hijinks are fun to watch. I don't think I'd want to be in her shoes, though (even if she does wear Aerosoles instead of Jimmy Choos or Manolo Blahniks). Reading a Scottoline book takes the same sort of "willing suspension of wanting to smack the protagonist upside the head" that you need to read a Stephanie Plum story. That means it's fun, but exasperating. This one's certainly fun, though the weakest point in Killer Smile's plot is its ending. That's a decidedly deus ex machina denouement of the sort that Scottoline usually manages to avoid. Such contrivance takes a little (though not much) shine off the tale.
A Paucity of Common Sense?
Let's face it: Mary DiNunzio's a ditz. Though valedictorian of her high school class and Law Review at Boalt School of Law, DiNunzio has the common sense of a can of spam. She's trained in the law, but she seems to ignore it at will. She may have book smarts, but boy! can she make some dumb decisions. Of course, if she did the smart thing - called in the cops, thought with her brains instead of her heart, things like that - then there'd be no reason for Scottoline to write about her. And if she didn't write about the Rosato bunch, we'd miss her trademark new catch phrase for every novel. This time it's her descriptions of Judy Carrier's outfits as variations on "cirque du soleil meets grunge rock." Even though there's a troubling psychic disconnect between ditzy lawyers and television courtroom dramas, you gotta like Bennie's bunch.
Recommended:
Yes
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