Alibi (Sydney Bauer, Macmillan Australia, $32.95 tpb, ISBN 9781405038485, April) ***

The third in a series of accomplished legal thrillers, Alibi brings us the latest adventures of ‘Boston’s most sought after defence attorney’ David Cavanaugh, last seen solving the murder of the US Vice President in Undertow. While the author’s name is itself an alibi (Sydney Bauer is Kimberly Scott, a former TV executive), there’s nothing secret about her formula. Alibi is fourth-fifths John Grisham, with some Jeffrey Archer-type ‘lifestyles of the rich and successful’ thrown in. The murder victim this time is a student at America’s priciest university sort of Harvard for the extra-elite, where only the mansion-dwelling, Ralph Lauren-wearing, Cape Cod-summering, straight-A-getting and hot-chick-shagging need apply. The clichés are laid on a bit thick at times (joining the pseudo-Kennedys are several hotshot lawyers, an earnest student activist and a wise, old Japanese man) and Bauer’s dialogue often doesn’t ring true. But she has well and truly mastered the essentials of the formula twists, turns, pace and more pace and, in Cavanaugh, has a likeable lead. Hard to resist.

Eamon Evans is features writer of Bookseller+Publisher

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

Tags: sydney bauer