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Scottoline, Lisa

Mistaken Identity

London, HarperCollins. 480 pp. £5.99.

Who's your family? Family is who you feel close to, who you love, and who loves you in return. Gives to you. You aren't stuck with the family you're born with. At some point, you grow up and choose your family ... You make it.

Bennie Rosato is a criminal attorney. She thinks that life couldn't possibly hold any more surprises for her, so that when the surprise comes at first she doesn't recognise it and then is nearly overwhelmed by it.

The surpise is when she enters a maximum-security prison to meet her new client, Alice Connolly. Connolly is accused of murdering her policeman lover but claims that the police framed her. That's not new to any lawyer. What is astonishing is the close physical resemblance between Bennie Rosato and the accused murderer, Alice Connolly.

Alice claims to be Bennie's twin sister. And she is able to prove it by displaying a close knowledge of Bennie's past life, her emotions and her way of thinking. This couldn't just be a coincidence. As the book unravels Bennie becomes more and more intrigued, believes the accused Alice to be her twin sister. She is deeply disturbed to discover that she has much more in common with her twin than she thought possible. She constantly wavers between wanting to abandon the case and deciding to go on with it.

The book raises a host of interesting issues to intrigue the reader even as you are being entertained by a page-turner of a story. There is first of all the whole question of the extent to which we know our own past. Who or what is family? What is right and what is wrong? Is a mere court able to uncover truth, never mind about doing right?

Should the past be reopened or should the dead past be made to bury its dead?

As in any good story the denouement (on the last page) will give you the same cold shivers it gave Bennie Rosato.


A Philadelphian, Lisa Scottoline was a trail lawyer before she turned to fulltime writing.

Shepherd, Stella

Twilight Curtain

London, Constable. 219 pp. £16.99.

Rowena Kemp has this cousin called Ellie. Ellie had run off with New Age travellers. To the best of Rowena's knowledge, Ellie was still somewhere in the West Country, existing hand-to-mouth.

In her capacity as a journalist, Rowena attended a clairvoyant's demonstration and was taken by the woman's utter sincerity and ability. The clairvoyant mentions a message from an Ellie, that Ellie knows she should have stayed in touch, is sorry for the hurt she's caused and sends love to all the family. The clairvoyant asked everyone present to join together and send love to Ellie. Poor Rowena Kemp. Can she continue being a cynical unbeliever? She is so distressed that she returns to her desk unable to write the required article. What does she now believe. If the woman was a fake, why couldn't she get her words out of her mind. If she is genuine, Ellie must be dead. The message had come from the other world.

Rowena feels she must do something. Ellie had worked for another clairvoyant, the famous Caireen Malone who (not knowing yet of the connection) offers Rowena a job writing her life story and achievements. Rowena accepts. Her life now divides between London, where she doesn't believe in clairvoyance, and the ambiance of Celtic Cornwall, where she falls under the spell of Caireen Malone and where anything is believable. She does find Ellie.

The author constantly plays with our beliefs as she does with those of Rowena. Are clairvoyants genuine, or merely people who believe in themselves and have carried us along with them, or out-and-out fakes? Cynics and skeptics may well find themselves challenged by this mystery novel.

Stella Shepherd is a former practising doctor and is now a full-time writer.

Smith, Michael Marshall

One of Us

London, HarperCollins. 307 pp. £14.99.

Have you ever done anything you wish to forget? No need to worry. Relief is at hand.

Hap Thompson, a ne'er-do-well (ex-criminal, ex-barman, ex-husband, many times ex-lover) has found something to do. It is money for jam. A job with REMtemps, whose sales pitch is "Sleep Tight. Sleep Right."

Anxiety dreams tend to affect middle and upper management executives. They are prepared to get rid of these anxiety dreams. Dreams cannot be erased. They have to be diverted from one mind to another. The client wakes up fully rested and ready for another day in the money mines. The receiver has an awful night of it, full of heavy dreams ... but is paid. Hap Thompson is paid according to dream duration, but there are bonuses if the dream is particularly vile. It beats petty crime and bar tending. Of course, he goes for the bonus dreams. Now he can travel, stay at the best hotels, be an ex-lover as often as he pleases. All he has to do is to ensure that the machine stays within six feet of his head when he is asleep.

The picture of life on the west Coast of America is shudderingly convincing (but who will dream it away for Californians). The novel is often ironic - the worst crime is to smoke anywhere, even in the street, and apartment houses have built-in smoke cigarette smoke detectors so perpetrators can be prosecuted. Kill, steal, but don't smoke. It is also funny - Hapgood has a nudnick clock that follows him everywhere with public reminders of what he should be doing.

Hapgood is probably more greedy than intelligent. He is offered a promotion, so to speak. Caretaking memories instead of dreams pays even more and he goes for it. One night he takes on a considerable memory and the client disappears. He sets off on the trail. He more or less solves the mystery. The theological discussion at the end of the book may be wry, but will stick in your memory.

From time to time a mystery novel comes along that by its power and imaginations grips the mind and the emotions and this is obviously such for one of the ten best for 1998.

Michael Marshal Smith lives in London. His books have been adapted for films and he writes for films himself, while providing a warm place for his cats to sleep.

Spring, Michelle

Nights in White Satin

London, Orion. 310 pp. £9.99.

The dark side of Cambridge, town and gown, is explored in the fourth Laura Principal investigation.

The college May Balls (champagne and oysters) take place in the middle of June, when the students let their hair (and much else) down.

Katie Arkwright was seen at eleven o'clock partying with her snobbish Prince Charming. But at 11.15 she was gone for good, leaving not even a glass slipper.

Laura Principal is employed, nay, directed, to find what happened to Katie, who wasn't even a student at the college. That's the first of many puzzles Laura faces, apart from her lover trying to mortgage her property to raise capital and yet distancing himself from her.

Michelle Spring through Laura Principal faces the problem of prostitution. Is it legitimate? What does a girl do, who has no means and wants to get through college and working Saturdays as a checkout cashier is far from enough? Are the modern young as sophisticated as they claim to be or try to appear? Codes of loyalty overriding common decency. What is the nature of guilt and responsibility?

Lots of dead bodies, an investigation that proceeds at a quick pace, thanks to the clipped prose. The resolving of a crisis between Laura and her boyfriend, which he neatly acknowledges as middle-aged.

Michelle Spring is a most welcome addition to the North American invasion of mystery novels set in Britain. And how she understand the British.