Suspicion of Innocence

Gail Pettis must put aside her own problems--a failing marriage, a looming custody battle, and a faltering legal career--when her sister, Renee, is murdered. A first novel. 40,000 first printing. $40,000 ad/promo.

Parker, a former prosecutor, turns in an exhilarating debut that steams with Miami heat. When troubled party girl Renee Pettis is found floating in the Everglades, her wrists slit to the bone, suspicion clings to her older sister Gail, a straight-arrow lawyer more married to her job than to her husband Dave. The resentment and anguish that smoldered between the sisters in life flares anew as drug running, land scams and the theft of a costly artifact bob to the surface. A parallel plot involves two Cuban cousins, one a two-bit vice lord who was Renee's lover, the other a respected attorney who seduces Gail while offering legal advice. The love scenes sink into the breathless lingo of romance novels, and readers may guess where the plot lines will converge, but this sizzling page-turner will keep lamps lit late into the night as it likely surges up the bestseller list.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The apparent suicide of her libertine younger sister leads an up-and-coming Wasp lawyer into the orbit of a Cuban grandee and his attractive family--and to an indictment for murder--in an intelligently steamy first novel. Jimmy Panther, an understandably cynical Indian Everglades tour guide and alligator handler, discovered the body of pretty Renee Pettis while showing a Scandinavian family the saurian terrors outside Miami. As it happened, Mr. Panther recognized the corpse from a distance, having had some rather odd business dealings with Renee in the recent past. Mr. Panther is just one of the upsetting characters who enter attorney Gail Connor's life as she tries to tie up the many loose ends her sister has left lying around the city. Gail quickly learns that Renee carried on with drug-dealers, was into rather advanced sexual activities, and secretly met Gail's husband, Dave, regularly for lunch. Was Dave the father of Renee's unborn child? He says not. Perhaps the father was too-slick property developer Carlos Pedrosa, with whom Renee carried on for months? Gail sincerely hopes the father was not Carlos's cousin Anthony Quintana, the exceptionally handsome lawyer she just met in court. She rather fancies Anthony--and, as it turns out, she will rather need him when the Miami police decide that Renee could not have slit her own wrists but that Gail very likely could have. It takes every bit of the family's political pull and spare cash to keep Gail out on bail so that she can find out why anyone would want to kill Renee, how Jimmy Panther got his hands on a valuable Indian artifact that seems to have something to do with the murder, what it is about her mother's cousin Ben that arouses such deep emotions, and exactly what she is going to do about the attractive but excessively secretive Mr. Quintana. Not terribly mysterious but deft, sexy, and populated with enough interesting characters for two books. Parker makes excellent use of Miami. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Gail Connor, an ambitious attorney climbing the corporate ladder at an old Miami law firm, is shaken when her sister Renee's body is found in the Everglades, an apparent suicide. Given Renee's wild lifestyle and history, no one is surprised, but then the police find evidence of foul play. They link Gail's estranged husband, as well as her lover, to Renee's demise; worst of all, Gail herself is their chief suspect. Set among Miami's legal, criminal, and Cuban high flyers, this stylish legal whodunit involves buried artifacts, drug trafficking, and shady politics--in short, all the usual Miami fare. It's a sun-drenched variation on the work of Scott Turow and Patricia Cornwell, whose fans will welcome this newcomer. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/93.
- Ann Donovan, St. Petersburg Jr. Coll. Lib., Fla.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Former prosecutor Parker's first novel plays south Florida fairly straight, as an intense, ethnically diverse, and socially incestuous enclave, but without the absurdities of a Hiassen or Leonard romp. Ex-debutante Gail Connor, an associate at a respected law firm, is shocked when her renegade sister Renee's body is found in the Everglades, an apparent suicide. But Renee's death shatters her more conventional sister's life: Gail's husband moves out, the police suspect her of murder, and Gail begins to wonder about members of her family, the enigmatic Native American who found Renee's body, and the Cuban attorney she's drawn to and his real estate developer cousin, both of whom were involved with Renee. Parker's tale is ultimately a meditation on "family" values within the immigrant Cuban community and the WASP elite that is losing its grip on Miami institutions. But Suspicion of Innocence will be popular not because of its analysis of family loyalty and betrayal, but because of appealing characters and an involving plot. Mary Carroll