Mistaken Identity

Rating:
Summary: The Accused is Her Dead Ringer
Review: Bennie (Benita) Rosato has managed to get herself into hot water with the Philadelphia Police Department on more than one occasion. In fact you might say the cops hate her. Could it be because she almost always wins in court and that she usually takes on police misconduct cases? So when someone accused of killing a cop wants to change attorneys at the last minute, a switch to Bennie might seem to make good sense.

However when Alice Connolly, accused of killing police detective Anthony Della Porta, declares that her current counsel is incompetent a week before she is to go on trial and says she wants Bennie to defend her, she's apparently looking for something more than competent counsel.

Bennie goes to the prison to interview Alice, but she's not prepared for what she finds. Alice proclaims her innocence, or course, and says she was framed by the police, but what knocks Bennie for a loop is the fact that Alice looks like a prettier, albeit streetwise, version of herself.

She claims to be Bennie's twin and has some strong evidence to prove it, however Bennie isn't convinced. However there's one person who could prove it one way or another, and that's Bennie's mother, but unfortunately she's not much help, given her mental illness. So Bennie, with a week's notice, has to decide whether she's going to save her self-professed twin from the screwed up defence she's been getting so far.

It's her sister (or is it?) after all, so there's a lot of interesting tactics bandied about to try and save Alice from her appointment with the needle, helped along by the biased rulings and demeanor of the judge. Is there a conspiracy afoot? Was the deceased detective involved in drug dealing? Can Bennie put the personal aspects of the case aside and be the calm and cool lawyer she must be?

When you go into a courtroom in one of Ms. Scottoline's books, it's like you're both observer and participant, prosecutor and counsel for the defense. It also doesn't hurt any that Scottoline can draw you into her characters and make you care about them with just a few words, that she paints scenes on her pages so real, you feel like you're there.

Reviewed by Leeann Douglass

Rating:
Summary: Great book - kept me up all night!
Review: Don't miss this book if you enjoy a good, fast-paced read with a legal bent to it. The review from Kirkus Associates does a much better job of describing the book than I can, so I'll leave that to them. Had never read any of Lisa Scottoline's novels before, but after finishing MISTAKEN IDENTITY, I immediately ordered her previous novel, ROUGH JUSTICE.

Ms. Scottoline's characters are real, and it doesn't take long to realize that she writes from personal experience and observation. She has been described as the " female John Grisham," but that description doesn't do her justice. Like Grisham, her past legal experience has paid off with her ability to create some very believable characters.

Lisa also has an interesting Web site at http://www.scottoline.com. and it's worth the visit to learn a bit more about the author. You'l' find a message board and online reviews there as well. That's where I found out that MISTAKEN IDENTY has evidently been optioned for development into a television series.

Looking forward to reading all of her previous novels.

Rating:
Summary: Mistaken identity, Scottoline is not Grisham
Review: Have you ever read a Grisham legal-thriller ?. In my opinion Mr. Grisham has provided an involuntary strong influence on Lisa Scottoline, this book looks like a copycat but cannot attain the level of the former writer. With a quick pace marked by short chapters and with a poor language improper for a legal-thriller, the author is determined to trap the reader into the plot and scores, because as the pages go by, she learns how to exploit the story setting the mystery out and then turning it into tight suspense which snowballs toward the last chapters, but when you finish the book and look at it as a whole in retrospect, it is easy to perceive loose ends during the course of the events as the author falls sometimes in traps set by her own creative ideas, leaving some important situations unresolved or sidestepped, this go hand to hand with the flabby character drawing and shows a definitive poor writing style.

Rating:
Summary: TWIN--WHAT HAPPENED TO YOU???
Review: This is the 6th Lisa Scottoline book I have read and except for some loose ends and sometimes the language, I think it is the best one I have read. Bennie Rosato is a very good lawyer, she is contacted by Alice Connolly who claims to be her twin. Alice is in jail for a murder she says she did not do. Bennie takes the case and then begins to uncover a conspiracy between the cops involved an attorney and even the judge. A retired cop, named Lou, is very helpful. I hope he is used again. The case goes to trial, you don't know until the last if Connolly is guilty or not or is she is a twin to Rosato or not.And after the trail, what happenes to Connolly. It all has a very good twist to the ending, at least one I did not expect. The action moves better than some of her other books and I enjoyed it very much. Would love to write the ending as it is very shocking but you will have to read the book.

Rating:
Summary: A fun, fast read
Review: While this book was a little long, I sped through it in a matter of days. Bennie Rosato returns in this story of family relationships and moral ambiguities. Bennie is asked to give legal aid to a woman who resembles her and claims to be her twin. Alice Connoly also claims to be inncocent of her boyfriend's murder and the victim of a police conspiracy. Alice's case was originally taken by a law firm that did nothing to help prepare her for trial, even though she was arrested nearly a year ago. It is now one week to trial and the judge refuses to grant Bennie any more time to prepare. All of this points to a conspiracy, but Bennie begins to think Alice may just be a good storyteller. Bennie has no idea if this woman is her twin and the more she learns of her look-alike's life, the more unsavory her character becomes. Like Scottline's Legal Tender, this is suspenseful and fast-paced with rich secondary characters.