Plucky feminist lays down the law



Devil’s Corner
Lisa Scottoline

Pan Macmillan £6.99

James Morton



Prosecuting lawyer Vicki Allegretti, now seemingly out of the DA’s office and working big time for the Feds, goes on a routine meet with a small-time confidential informant. Outside the derelict building in Devil’s Corner, centre of Philadelphia’s drug dealing, is her partner Morty, guiltily finishing a cigarette. And suddenly it all goes wrong.



A corn-rowed youth appears with a Glock – and it is good-bye poor CI and Morty, who thunders up the stairs at the wrong moment. Since Allegretti is our heroine, naturally she survives this encounter and sets out to track down just what has gone wrong and avenge Morty’s death. And since she is the heroine, not only of this book but also of a series, readers will not be surprised to find that, albeit with a few turns and setbacks, this is exactly what she achieves.



Of course she is not alone in this venture. She is helped by what the blurb calls an ‘unlikely ally’ and the pair have ‘only their streetwise attitude, smart humour and friendship to see them through’. Guess who? Yes, it’s an African-American girl, and the pair mirror the uneasy relationship of Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte in ‘48 Hours’ before trust and understanding break through.



Vicki, naturally, has problems in her love life. She pines for the arms of fellow lawyer Dan Malloy, whose ‘gingery hair, layered with longish sideburns, was a sexy rumple’. Unfortunately, he is married to Portuguese ‘Dr Mariella Suarez, beautiful, willowy and “fake-blonde”’. The only ‘kosher’ kiss between Dan and Vicki is one on the forehead after she has won a case. But how her loins ache. To compound her problems, she is also having difficulties with her father.



In a previous life, the author Lisa Scottoline was a well-known Philadelphia trial lawyer, and so the background and legal scenes are as well done as one would expect. But many will see the book as formulaic. Ultimately whether Devil’s Corner is for beside or in the swimming pool depends quite simply on whether you like this genre, begun years ago by Sara Paretsky and now carried on by Lisa Scottoline, Patricia Cornwell, Linda Fairstein and co, in which plucky feminists triumph over chauvinism and prejudice.



One reviewer suggests that if you miss ‘Ally McBeal’ then this is the book for you, and she is about right. On the other hand, you might go for the rather less saccharine and more rough and tough novels of James Lee Burke and his Texan lawyer, Billy Bob Holland, or those of Michael Connelly, who has just produced a new and very entertaining anti-hero in The Cadillac Lawyer.



If you feel you must have Philadelphia, you might like the rather quirky novels of William Lashner and his slightly bent lawyer hero Victor Carl. If you have not read any of those, then Fatal Flaw is a highly entertaining start. If it is American legal novels you want, then have a look at either John Martell and Richard North Patterson.



There is no doubt, however, that Lisa Scottoline’s Vicki Allegretti has thousands if not hundreds of thousands of followers, and if you are one of them then Devil’s Corner will not disappoint.



James Morton is a former criminal law specialist solicitor and now a freelance journalist




Uptight lawyer lives it up with free spirit


Courting Alex
Paramount

Mondays, 9pm

Neil Rose



In ‘Dharma & Greg’, Jenna Elfman played a free spirit who finds love with an uptight lawyer. In ‘Courting Alex’, she plays an uptight lawyer who finds love with a free spirit. You can almost see the television executives nodding their heads at the brilliance of their concept.



Your heart starts sinking as soon as you read the blurb: ‘A new comedy series about an attractive, single attorney who has everything life has to offer… except a life.’ Some City lawyers out there may even look on it as a documentary.



From the moment the series kicks off, with Alex Rose (Elfman) busy dealing with clients on her mobile while supposedly on a date, you know pretty much what you are getting. And when she claps eyes on Scott (Josh Randall), the cute owner of a bar that her lawyer father needs to buy on behalf of a client to complete a major development, you know for certain what you are getting. By the end of episode one she has played hookey from work to join Scott on the back of his motorcycle.



To ensure that central casting is not idle, we also have Molly (Jillian Bach), Alex’s loyal and fast-quipping assistant, Alex’s eccentric British neighbour Julian (Hugh Bonneville), who pops in unannounced in the manner so beloved of US sitcoms, and her father and senior partner Bill (Dabney Coleman), who is proud, anxious about her single status and thrice-married himself.



Yet while ‘Courting Alex’ would not know a new comedy frontier if it tripped over one, it is pleasant enough and undemanding – especially as you don’t have to laugh all that often – although you have to wonder whether the premise is strong enough to carry it through the episodes to come.



The tension between Alex’s work and love lives almost immediately begins to dissolve, and at first blush the chemistry between the leads is not at the explosive end of the spectrum.



‘Courting Alex’ will not make it near the pantheon of great US sitcoms, but equally is not tumbling into the dumpster of disasters. If you too are an attractive, single lawyer who yearns for a life, this is a way to pass the time until you find one.