Lucky in love?

Feisty California attorney Nina Reilly is back in Unlucky in Law, installment 10 of Perri O'Shaughnessy's popular series. As the story opens, Reilly has moved from Tahoe to Carmel-by-the-Sea to be with her fiancŽ, private investigator Paul van Wagoner. She is offered a position as second-chair defense attorney in a case involving the murder of a Russian immigrant's daughter. Her client, two-time convicted felon Stefan Wyatt, proclaims his innocence (don't they all?), and a closer look at the evidence reveals some especially shoddy investigative work prior to Reilly's involvement in the case. If convicted, Wyatt stands to serve 25 to life, as a consequence of California's Third Strike law. Unless Reilly is able to pull the proverbial rabbit from the fedora, her client is in deep trouble. Add to the soup a couple of Muscovite thugs, a radical Orthodox priest and a deft liar who may be the legitimate heir to the Romanov court (i.e., the rightful current-day Tsar of Russia), and you have a flavorful borscht indeed. Perri O'Shaugnessy, by the way, is the pseudonym of a pair of sisters, Pamela and Mary O'Shaughnessy, the first a onetime lawyer, the other an editor in a previous life. Together they have crafted some of the most entertaining legal thrillers in recent memory.