Face Value - Softcover

Matera, Lia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0671888404 ISBN 13: 9780671888404

Publisher: Pocket, 1995

Synopsis

Laura hangs out her shingle. She's ready to take any case, even a woman who claims that her New Age guru videotapes group sex sessions for therapeutic reasons--tapes that wind up at the local porno parlors. Laura's investigation takes her from a private fantasy island to kinky sex club back rooms to corporate boardrooms. HC: Simon & Schuster.

About this title

About the Author:

Lia Matera is a graduate of Hastings College of the Law, where she

was editor in chief of the Constitutional Law Quarterly. She was

also a Teaching Fellow at Stanford Law School before becoming a full-time

writer of legal mysteries. Prior Convictions and A Radical

Departure were nominated for Edgar Allan Poe awards. The Good

Fight and Where Lawyers Fear to Tread were nominated for Anthony

and Macavity Awards. She has written nine novels, including the critically

acclaimed Face Value. Matera lives in Santa Cruz, California.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Where on earth does Laura di Palma (``my primary areas of specialty are bankruptcy and corporate litigation'') get the weird criminal clients who keep her in business? After her high-powered San Francisco law firm lets her go, Laura (A Hard Bargain, 1992, etc.) finds herself with two unlikely clients in rapid succession: Margaret Lenin, another corporate lawyer who talks about suing her spiritual guru, Brother Mike, for computer-altering the sex-therapy free-for- alls she'd participated in and for putting the altered videotapes up for sale; and then, after Margaret backs down, Brother Mike himself, who arranges through Laura's old law-school classmate Gretchen Miller to hire Laura to defend a similar suit threatened by exotic dancer Arabella de Janeiro. Before she can sign a contract with Brother Mike, though, Laura makes two trips to Arabella's workplace, The Back Door, with searing results: first, a memorable trip through a hellish First Amendment rally, then a chilling confrontation with six dead strippers. And Brother Mike's behavior--when she catches up with him on a private island off the Washington coast--is just as bizarre: he offers unsolicited sexual advice to her and disappears moments after he's asked her to release him from the handcuffs a new follower clapped him in. Matera's look at the dehumanizing power of sexual manipulation- -the computer re-imaging plot here cuts much deeper than the gimmickry of Rising Sun--is so unblinking that you'll look right past the story's coincidences in your hurry to get to the hair-raising finale. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Pocket
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0671888404
• ISBN 13: 9780671888404
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 272