British barrister Trish Maguire is keeping a deathwatch at the bedside of her father, from whom she's long been estranged, when an old friend prevails on her to help Deborah Gibbert, a woman accused of suffocating her own ailing father. Even her own family believe Deb killed her father, a difficult man whose death by "natural causes" was successfully challenged by Deb's sister and led to a guilty verdict against her. Trish's own conflicts with her father inform her efforts on Deb's behalf; so does Deb's long friendship with an M.P. whose motives for helping her case are murky, to say the least. This relatively bloodless psychological thriller is short on suspense but somewhat longer on character development. Trish is a complex woman whose sense of obligation to her family and friends, as well as her clients, often results in the kind of intrapsychic conflicts that make for interesting reading but detract from the pace of the narrative and do little to ratchet up the dramatic tension. This is her third appearance in an otherwise unremarkable series that will appeal mostly to those interested in the arcane workings of the English legal system. --Jane Adams
