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Overview
Widowed mainstream attorney Martha Patterson finds herself frustrated by her recent retirement. When a former colleague offers her a volunteer job as a pro bono lawyer for West Brooklyn Legal Services, Martha eagerly looks forward to resuming her career. On Martha's first day at work, she encounters one of the agency's clients, Wilma Oberfell, a patient with a history of psychiatric problems. Wilma's only words to her are "I don't know whom I can trust." The next day Martha sees Wilma lurking outside her apartment building, but Wilma disappears before she has a chance to speak to her. And almost immediately, Martha finds herself in the middle of a murder investigation when she stumbles across a body in the entrance of a deteriorating apartment building. Martha is haunted by Wilma's words. Her unquenchable curiosity and sense of noblesse oblige lead her on an unexpected search for the truth behind the woman's death.Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
When retired lawyer Martha Patterson's first day on the job at a Brooklyn Legal Aid clinic erupts in burglary, robbery (nice legal distinctions here), and murder, she digs in her heels, looks closely at the vividly assorted cast, and turns in the neatest detecting job you'll see in a new series this year.—Tom Leitch
Kirkus Reviews
Talk about starting with a bang. While retired and widowed lawyer Martha Patterson is still being warned against "the Mother Teresa syndrome" in her new job at West Brooklyn Legal Services, one of the paralegals bursts into the office bleeding from a head wound; he's been mugged, says Carlos Quinones, by three men who stole the rent-strike money he'd just collected from The Building. Hours later, just after Martha gets off the phone with Tessie Doone, a tenant of The Building whose Social Security checks have stopped coming, crazy Wilma Oberfell stalks into the office claiming "I don't know whom I can trust" before following Martha home, then skulking away. And the next day, when Martha goes out to The Building to talk to Tessie, she runs into Wilma again, strangled by a convenient burglar. Even if you don't believe the burglar story, the suspects—the decamped tenants' association treasurer at The Building, Tessie's fast-talking grandson Kareem Hewitt, a mysterious man on The Building's fire escape, and of course all those lawyers at Brooklyn Legal Services—are almost too plentiful to believe.Sprague follows her Edgar-winning YA novel, Signpost to Terror (1967), with a mazelike tale that not only features an unobtrusively gifted detective—Martha's eye for detail puts her head and shoulders above most of her big-ticket competition—but provides a virtual handbook of rarely fictionalized pro bono legal maneuvers.
Book Details
Published
March 1, 1998
Publisher
Thorndike Press
Pages
335
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780786213450