THE BEST DEFENSE

Defiantly barefoot Oregon lawyer Barbara Holloway (Death Qualified, 1991) calls a truce with her lawyer father and buys pantyhose and a proper courtroom jacket in order to defend battered wife Paula Kennerman, accused of killing her six-year-old daughter and setting fire to the women's safe house at Canby Ranch. The Dodgson family, the ranch's wealthy neighbors, are baying for the child killer's blood—a demand that dovetails neatly with the shrill, troglodyte editorial stance of Richard Dodgson's weekly paper—and it looks as if they have Paula's bright, boyish public defender, Bill Spassero, and her private-duty physician in their pockets. Enter Barbara and her tattered legions (Paula's sister Lucille Reiner, Barbara's newly supportive father, a trio of grad- student researchers), seeking to get Bill to withdraw from the case so they can mount a defense that will raise the specter of reasonable doubt and impeach Paula's abusive husband, Jack, the hysterically bullying Dodgsons and their spies and toadies, and the nationwide anti-abortion, anti-birth control, anti-feminist lobby. Sprawling and overlong—especially the trial sequences—but ultimately rousing, considering how much Barbara's fighting for and how much it matters.