BRIGHT FUTURES

When an activist who opposes government financing of college scholarships and education programs for the gifted is murdered, there’s no dearth of suspects.

Change comes slowly to Lew Fonesca’s world. The process server is still seeing therapist Ann Hurwitz, who makes him bring her biscotti, and social worker Sally Porovksy, though after four years they’ve never been intimate. He still never smiles, still mourns his wife Catherine’s hit-and-run death back in Chicago, still allows the man who killed her to sleep on his office floor. But now he’s moving to a new office and considering making his professional partnership with Ames McKinney official. And he has a new clutch of clients—high-school student Greg Legerman, his mother Alana and his grandfather, retired TV infomercial king D. Elliot Corkle—who all want to pay him to investigate the murder of anti-education crank Philip Horvecki, for which the Sarasota PD has Greg’s friend Ronnie Gerall in custody. Lew’s not much interested in the case, but someone else obviously is, someone who keeps shooting at Lew with a pellet gun and hitting the people around him. It’s no surprise when Lew digs up dirt on the victim, the police suspect and his clients. What’s much more surprising is the bombshell Sally drops on Lew, or his realization just after punching a suspect in the nose that he actually feels something.

As deeply felt as Lew’s first five cases (Always Say Goodbye, 2006, etc.), though the waggish cast seems to have wandered over from Kaminsky’s Toby Peters franchise.