GRAND JURY

Don't be fooled by the legal-intrigue title: Most of this overwrought, overextended suspenser takes place miles from the nearest courtroom—or the nearest editorial pencil. But first, Friedman (Inadmissable Evidence, 1992, etc.) gets his day in court when Chinese-American p.r. flack Susan Linwood, sitting on a New York grand jury, hears a fellow juror cast doubt on the case against Martin and Meiling Eng, arrested for heroin trafficking. The case seems ironclad—the cops who broke in on the Engs found half a pound of heroin and a million dollars in cash—but quiet, persistent juror Mrs. Liu insists that 80-ish Martin Eng, a leader in the Chinese community, would never be involved with heroin, and would never have resisted arrest in the way Det. Mike Pullone testified. Susan agrees to raise Mrs. Liu's reservations officially, but although she persuades David Clark, a computer designer between real jobs, of her misgivings, the jury, after interminable argument, still votes an indictment- -whereupon Susan goes to visit the Engs, agrees to travel with David to Hong Kong to alleviate the fears of the Engs's children and make a few incidental inquiries about her own parents' death in a 1976 earthquake. Even as Susan and David are drawing closer to the Engs and gathering evidence of the high-level corruption they suspect was behind the heroin bust, the D.A.'s office is gathering its own evidence that the Engs are involved in something illegal, something that may well be bigger than the original drug charge. So no sooner do Susan and David, who've been panting for each other ever since they flew to Hong Kong, return from their trip than they're subpoenaed as witnesses before another grand jury—if they aren't kidnapped or bullied into silence first. A cluttered, lumbering, unthrilling thriller that begins as an endless update of 12 Angry Men and ends in shrill, outdated Yellow Peril theatrics. (First printing of 150,000; Literary Guild & Doubleday bookclub selections; $175,000 ad/promo; author tour)