4 stars out of 5
The client, Joe Lattimore, is a former boxer with a wife and young daughter - and they're homeless. Desperate for money, he reluctantly agrees to participate in an illicit street fight in exchange for cash. The fight easily goes Joe's way until it doesn't; Joe is told that his blows killed his opponent and that there's a video of the fight. Later, he's asked to commit a high-end home robbery - with the threat of releasing the video if he refuses. Believing he has no choice, he does as asked - only to find a brutally murdered woman inside the home. Terrified, he runs out - leaving his finger and hand prints behind. To make matters worse, his victim's husband, a prominent local judge, returns home just in time to see Joe running away.
An anonymous call to the police conveniently identifies Joe's whereabouts, the and he's picked him up and tossed in jail. Joe knows of Robin from their days in the fight game, so he contacts her and begs for help. As she searches for evidence of Joe's innocence, nothing of substance turns up - but the smell of that rat doesn't subside. She keeps digging, expanding the hole to include several shady characters, more blackmail and yes, more murders - all adding up to an adventure with plenty of twists and turns.
If I have to nit-pick, I'll point to a little too lengthy and basic explanations of legal issues that we die-hard "Law and Order" or "Perry Mason" fans could recite by heart and that at times, it seemed as if Robin was playing a secondary role here. But overall, this is a well-written, exciting way to spend an afternoon or two (and for the record, even though this is the fifth in the series, it stands alone very well). Many thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley, for allowing me to read and review a pre-release copy.
A Matter of Life and Death by Phillip Margolin (Minotaur Books, March 2021); 281 pp.
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