Feathers fly in novel revenge

The Vendetta Defenceby Lisa ScottolineHarperCollins, 9.99Neil RoseLisa Scottoline has been hailed as 'the female John Grisham', and this is a comparison that does her few favours.Like Grisham, she writes pacy legal thrillers that encourage you to keep flipping the pages over.

And she too does not stray far from the literary territory she knows well - Italian American lawyers in Philadelphia.

Unlike Grisham, however, Scottoline imbues her characters with, well...

character.The Vendetta Defence is her eighth book, and pleasingly returns the regular reader to Rosato & Associates, the all-women law firm run by Bennie Rosato.

Bennie was a lead character in previous books but more recently has been demoted to a peripheral figure, who sadly has lost her fine sense of humour.This time it is the turn of Judy Carrier to take centre stage (her fellow associate Mary DiNunzio having done so in the last book and been shot for her troubles), acting in the case of a 79-year-old pigeon-fancier known as Pigeon Tony, who has been arrested for murder.

Far from denying his guilt, Pigeon Tony is more than happy to admit that he killed lifelong enemy and fellow pigeon-fancier Angelo Coluzzi (there really are too many pigeons in this book and they get the early pages off to a slow start).

Tony says it was the result of a vendetta that began 60 years before in Mussolini's Italy after the murder of Tony's wife.Judy, the only non-Italian around, soon finds herself mixed up in the next stage of the vendetta, with Coluzzi's sons trying to exact revenge.

On the plus side, Pigeon Tony's grandson is a hunky Italian sort, so as the bombs and bullets start flying, so do the sparks.Where Lisa Scottoline often scores is with her amusing tone, and she adds to this superbly with the creation of Pigeon Tony's octogenarian posse, all of whom are Italians called Tony.

Judy too is an appealing person, owning up to her shortcomings but, such is the way of these novels, heroically fighting through them.

And the plot holds together, which has sometimes been aScottoline failing in the past.This is not the first Scottoline novel that is a little longer than it perhaps needs to be, but nor is it the first to create an entertaining story on the back of strong female lead characters.

She makes you look forward to the next visit to Rosato & Associates, and you cannot ask for much more than that.