BETRAYAL

Portland attorney Robin Lockwood butts heads awkwardly with her latest beau, deputy D.A. Tom McKee, in the case of the West Hills Massacre.

A neighbor spots Mandy Kerrigan, a former world champion in Mixed Martial Arts, raising a ruckus outside the Finch family’s door a few minutes past 8 p.m. Half an hour later, when Arthur Proctor, Annie Finch’s English teacher, enters the house to discuss the teenager's possible transfer to a private school, he finds the whole family shot to death. The police are too satisfied with the likely guilt of Mandy, who’d just beaten up 20-something Ryan Finch in front of witnesses for supplying her with detection-proof performance-enhancing drugs that a post-match screening easily detected, to seek out other suspects. But Robin, who takes a personal interest in the case because Mandy thrashed her in an MMA match 10 years ago, quickly finds a multitude of both suspects and possible primary targets. Margaret Finch has long served as the go-to attorney for Jack Kovalev, the Russian mobster whose repeated car-accident insurance scams have recently been threatened with exposure. Her chemist husband, Nathan, had been fired from King Pharmaceuticals after embezzling funds to cover his gambling debts to importunate bookmaker Mario Messina. Even Annie was a 14-year-old cyberbully whose online taunts had reportedly led her classmate Donna Faber to suicide. Yet another wild card is CPA Alan Chen, a Special Forces veteran who vowed revenge after his wife was killed in the latest accident Kovalev staged. The actual murderer isn’t especially surprising, but it’s still satisfying to see Robin defeat her secret lover in court and come out on top.

Dependable thrills, spills, and courtroom maneuvers.