Face Value

by Lia Matera

Overview

A lawyer is drawn into a dangerous case after a love guru shakes up San Francisco in this mystery by the author of A Hard Bargain.

Leaving an expensive firm and toxic work environment behind her, attorney Laura Di Palma has opened her own practice. She’s eager for business, and she’s not about to turn away fellow lawyer Margaret Lenin.

Margaret had been struggling with a midlife crisis. Full of deep questions, she sought answers from a spiritual master, a guru by the name of Brother Mike. He led videotaped group therapy sessions to help his followers explore their spirituality and sexuality. The trouble is those tapes are now available in the XXX sections of video stores . . .

Taking the case pushes Laura far out of her comfort zone. She needs help from her ex, PI Sandy Arkelett, and their investigation leads them from stuffy boardrooms to strip clubs, porno shops, a private fantasy island—and a grisly murder scene . . .

“Absorbing . . . Multiple murders and delightfully complex characters help carry a plot that moves from a striptease bar to a guru’s mysterious island retreat. . . . A fine, intelligent story.” —USA Today

“This latest Laura Di Palma adventure is no exception to the tight plotting, good characterizations, and page turning suspense that have typified the earlier entries in the series and that make Matera one of the best contemporary mystery novelists. . . . Highly recommend . . . Matera is too good to miss.”—Booklist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781504066723
Publisher:	MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Publication date:	06/15/2021
Series:	The Laura Di Palma Mysteries , #4
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Lia Matera is the Edgar, Anthony, and Macavity Award–nominated author of nine novels. A graduate of UC Hastings College of the Law, where she was editor in chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly, Matera was a teaching fellow at Stanford Law School before becoming a full-time writer of legal mysteries. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.

Editorial Reviews

This latest Laura Di Palma adventure is no exception to the tight plotting, good characterizations, and page-turning suspense that have typified the earlier entries in the series and that make Matera one of the best contemporary mystery novelists. Having been fired from her high-powered law firm over her pro bono work--the subject of "A Hard Bargain" (1992)--Laura starts her own law practice. Her first client is an old colleague who, along with several other professionals, has become involved with a New Age guru--Brother Mike--whose "spiritual guidance" includes videotaping group sex sessions and then "re-imaging" the participants to show their auras. Laura's client had no problem with all of this until the films, sans auras, began showing up in local video stores. Although the participants had signed releases allowing the taping, Laura agrees to see if they have a case--hopefully something that will get her new practice off the ground. It soon becomes clear, however, that the videos have triggered other activities, including murder. Laura calls on her old friend Sandy Arklett for help, and their ambiguous relationship, plus another distinctly odd client, makes an intriguing subplot. Highly recommended--and make sure Laura's earlier adventures are available, too. Matera is too good to miss.

Stuart Miller

Where on earth does Laura di Palma ("my primary areas of specialty are bankruptcy and corporate litigation") get the weird criminal clients who keep her in business? After her high-powered San Francisco law firm lets her go, Laura (A Hard Bargain, 1992, etc.) finds herself with two unlikely clients in rapid succession: Margaret Lenin, another corporate lawyer who talks about suing her spiritual guru, Brother Mike, for computer-altering the sex-therapy free-for- alls she'd participated in and for putting the altered videotapes up for sale; and then, after Margaret backs down, Brother Mike himself, who arranges through Laura's old law-school classmate Gretchen Miller to hire Laura to defend a similar suit threatened by exotic dancer Arabella de Janeiro. Before she can sign a contract with Brother Mike, though, Laura makes two trips to Arabella's workplace, The Back Door, with searing results: first, a memorable trip through a hellish First Amendment rally, then a chilling confrontation with six dead strippers. And Brother Mike's behavior—when she catches up with him on a private island off the Washington coast—is just as bizarre: he offers unsolicited sexual advice to her and disappears moments after he's asked her to release him from the handcuffs a new follower clapped him in. Matera's look at the dehumanizing power of sexual manipulation—the computer re-imaging plot here cuts much deeper than the gimmickry of Rising Sun—is so unblinking that you'll look right past the story's coincidences in your hurry to get to the hair-raising finale.

Kirkus Reviews