Levine, Paul: Deep Blue Alibi

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This second installment in Paul Levine's series of courtroom whodunits finds Miami legal partners Steve Solomon and Victoria Lord defending murder suspect Hal Griffin, the former business partner of Victoria's father. But the "locked boat" mystery in which Griffin is implicated--two men on a yacht in the middle of the ocean and one of them ends up dead--is only one of several puzzles to be solved in this book. Griffin's reappearance in Victoria's life stirs up her resentment and curiosity about her father's long-ago suicide, while Steve sets out to uncover the secrets behind his father's retirement from the bench--not quite disbarment--years earlier.

As in Solomon vs. Lord (see my review), the first book in Levine's series, much is made of Victoria and Steve's vastly different personal styles: she's Ivy League uptight, he's Jimmy Buffett mellow. We see more, also, of Steve's nephew Bobby, who puts his unusual talents to work helping his Uncle track down a killer. Both of the principals turn out to have parents with intriguing pasts, though Steve's disgraced father seems, at least at this point in the series, to be a more nuanced character than Victoria's silicone-enhanced mother. The secondary mysteries the two parents bring to the book add to an already solid story. An enjoyable read and a good mystery.

Comments

[Maxine]

1.

I recently read the first in the series but was not impressed. Is this one better than the first?

[Debra Hamel]

2.

I gave them the same grade, but I think I enjoyed the actual case involved in this one better, to the extent that I remember the first one. Much less was made this time around of Bobby's autism; it's alluded to, I believe, but mostly he's just being a little foul-mouthed and using his uncanny intellect to help. I don't remember if Steve's father figured in the first one much, but he's in this one a lot and I think makes for a more interesting story. There is an unlikely scene in a nudist club, mention of which didn't make it into the review. This, as I saw, struck me as highly unlikely, but on the other hand it was a little funny.