Joe's View

Writing on a novel-per-year basis since 1993, Lisa Scottoline has created some of the best crime fiction of the past decade, but the author’s millions of readers probably love the people in her stories even more than her amazingly clever plots.
Mystery fans tend to divide the genre into two very distinct categories —“cozies” in which amateur sleuths solve crimes that never get too gruesome (think Jessica Fletcher) and “hard-boiled” mysteries in which P.I. and cop protagonists dish up much higher sex-and-violence quotients (the Ian Rankin and Michael Connelly novels would fall in that group).
Scottoline has managed to write outside both of those boxes in her 15 novels about crime and the law in the writer’s native Philadelphia.
What has drawn so many diverse readers to the books, however, is Scottoline’s warmth and humor and the great women characters she has placed at the center of each story (in her early days, she was called “the female John Grisham) .
Because she has deftly avoided the trap of writing a series of books about one character, Scottoline has been able to shift around Philadelphia with a freedom denied to peers such as Sue Grafton and Sara Paretsky, who have followed a single character in book after book.
Scottoline did leave herself the freedom to return to popular characters over the years.
I’ve enjoyed all of the books, but my favorite character is the Italian-American lawyer Mary DiNunzio, who was the heroine of Scottoline’s debut novel, “Everywhere That Mary Went” in 1993, and who is back for “Lady Killer,” which Harper will publish on Feb. 19.
Mary has grown in each of her adventures over the years — she’s become a lot feistier than she was in 1993 — but the widowed attorney is still rooted in her family life in South Philadelphia, despite the fact that Mary now has a condo in Center City and a job with one of the top law firms in Philadelphia.
In the “Mary books,” Scottoline always takes the reader back to the tidy rowhouse where Mary grew up and where her wonderful parents, Mr. and Mrs. DiNunzio, continue to hold court. In past novels, the house has been a shelter for endangered clients, and a place where all of Mary’s colleagues and friends have been welcomed and potential mates have been vetted.
The DiNunzios are always there for Mary and, on more than one occasion, she has wondered what she is going to do when they aren’t there anymore.
When her own father died five years ago, Scottoline realized there was more autobiography in the DiNunzios than she had thought.
The writer decided to put her fictional family aside until she could start to come to terms with her own loss.
“Lady Killer” is the first DiNunzio novel since “Killer Smile” in 2004 and I am happy to report that it is one of Scottoline’s best books, a perfect blend of suspense and personal drama, as Mary is pressed into helping an old enemy from high school days (the popular “mean girl” Trish Gambone, who Mary and her friends used to call “Trash”).
Trish is in an abusive relationship with a guy Mary once tutored (and dated) in high school, but she refuses to file the restraining order that Mary suggests.
Trish and her mob-connected boyfriend disappear.
Even though she never liked Gambone, Mary feels old neighborhood guilt and becomes determined to find out what happened to the woman.
“Lady Killer” keeps Mary in South Philly for much of the book — where battle lines are drawn between the lawyer’s friends and family and those who say Mary has (literally and figuratively) gone uptown.
Scottoline doesn’t stint on suspense and excitement, but she once again makes us care as much about her people as we do about the solution to the mystery. And, what a great pleasure it is to revisit Mr. and Mrs. DiNunzio.