Exposed

June 5, 2017
Edgar-winner Scottoline highlights the perils of our health care system in her fast-paced, heart-tugging fifth Rosato & DiNunzio novel (after 2016’s Damaged). Simon Pensiera, an old family friend of Philadelphia lawyer Mary DiNunzio, needs her help. Simon’s four-year-old daughter is ill with leukemia, and Simon believes that his former employer, OpenSpace, fired him because of mounting insurance costs. Mary agrees to represent Simon, not knowing that her partner Bennie Rosato represents OpenSpace’s parent company. OpenSpace refuses to settle out of court, and it looks as if the case will come down to a credibility battle. The conflict of interest threatens to tear the new partnership apart when Mary refuses to refer Simon’s case to another lawyer. But when Simon’s former boss is found murdered, he’s considered the prime suspect, and Mary has a much bigger problem on her hands. Readers will enjoy seeing how it all plays out in this appealing but somewhat predictable installment. 400,000-copy announced first printing; author tour. Agent: Robert Gottlieb, Trident Media Group.

Starred review from June 15, 2017
Rosato & DiNunzio, Philadelphia's most drama-ridden law firm (Damaged, 2016, etc.), faces perhaps its most dramatic episode ever when it's threatened from both outside and in.Sales rep Simon Pensiera's wrongful-termination case against OpenSpace, from which his boss, Todd Eddington, fired him when his daughter Rachel's medical expenses rose into the stratosphere, ought to be open and shut--especially since Simon, the son of one of Matty DiNunzio's oldest South Philly friends, is practically a cousin to Matty's daughter, Mary, who offers to take the case for free. It turns out, though, that Mary's partner, Bennie Rosato, has long represented Dumbarton Industries, OpenSpace's owner, so there's an obvious conflict of interest. Or maybe not so obvious, Mary and Bennie decide separately after doing a little independent research. Even so, it's clear that Mary really wants to take the case, and Dumbarton CEO Nate Lence, who's always had a thing for Bennie, really wants her to leave it alone--so much that when Bennie tries to resolve the conflict by pulling all Dumbarton's business, Nate files a retaliatory defamation suit seeking $2 million from the newly unemployed Simon, who already can't afford the bone-marrow transplant Rachel desperately needs. Can things get any worse? Of course they can, as Mary shows when she launches the nuclear option and leaves the firm, a move that not only rocks Bennie's world, but makes the two former partners adversaries in nearly every sense imaginable. Then Todd Eddington is murdered with all the evidence pointing directly to Simon, and this wild, intricate, yet perfectly clear, greased-lightning legal nightmare still has half its length to run. Despite some overheated damsel-in-distress complications toward the end, a stellar demonstration of the proposition that although it can't bring back the dead, "justice was still the best consolation prize going." The final curtain will find you cheering, and Scottoline will have earned every hurrah.

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