THINK TWICE

Philadelphia lawyer Bennie Rosato’s evil twin takes over her life. No, really.

Alice Connelly is in deep trouble. The drug runner she’d hooked up with has gone missing, and she’s certain that their supplier, Q, plans to disappear her too. Luckily, she has an escape route: Knock out Bennie Rosato, the identical twin from whom she’s been separated since childhood (Dear Ringer, 2003, etc.), take her place long enough to bleed her bank accounts dry, then take a well-financed powder. Though she’s a total sociopath, Alice is no dummy, and the plan works like a charm. In short order, she fools Bennie’s associates, Mary DiNunzio and Judy Carrier; Bennie’s all-important private banker, Marla Stone; and Bennie’s ex-lover, Grady Wells. Only self-styled witch queen Fiorella Bucatina, Mary’s cousin from Italy, has her doubts. Meanwhile, Bennie, who’s been buried alive because soft-hearted Alice doesn’t want to shoot anyone with her face, claws from the inside of her casket to free herself as a wild animal claws from the outside. Even after Bennie climbs out of her grave, she’ll face a series of daunting challenges because Alice has succeeded so completely in ensconcing herself in her role as Bennie, turning Bennie’s buds into her allies, and recruiting them to watch out for Alice that it’s bedraggled Bennie, not well-armored Alice, who looks like the imposter. Scottoline (Look Again, 2009, etc.) unfolds her story in breathlessly quick cuts from Alice’s plans to Bennie’s tribulations to the family problems and amatory complications of Mary, which seem to have wandered in from another, considerably less urgent, installment in the saga of Rosato and Associates. Whenever Bennie seems to be closing in on her goal of avenging herself on Alice for good, Alice finds a countermove that changes the game, even though Bennie’s chase becomes less interesting as it grows more straightforward.

No matter. You won’t believe a word of this tale of cat and mouse, but you won’t put it down unfinished either.