Beyond reasonable doubt

In Dugoni's contrived sequel to Her Deadly Game, Seattle defense attorney Keera Duggan helps a childhood acquaintance fight her second murder charge in six years. Biotech CEO Jenna Bernstein is better known for the allegations that she killed her company's chief science officer than for her business acumen. Keera's father, Patsy, defended Jenna in that case, using her testimony to point suspicion toward her COO, Sirius Kohl. Now, Sirius has been shot with the same weapon used in the earlier murder--just as rumors have started spreading that he was cooperating with the feds to bring a fraud charge against Jenna. With Patsy incapacitated by alcoholism, Keera takes the lead in clearing Jenna's name, despite the pair's tense childhood friendship, which ended when Jenna tried to drown Keera. Unfortunately, Jenna is a bit too broadly drawn for readers to buy into her and Keera's dynamic, and the plot twists fall flat. Even fans of the previous installment are likely to find this one undercooked. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Oct.)

Five years after attorney Patsy Duggan, Seattle's Irish Brawler, got CEO Jenna Bernstein found not guilty of killing a scientist about to reveal some ugly secrets about her firm, Jenna has to rely on Patsy's daughter, Keera, when she's accused of killing an even more highly placed co-worker. The sad truth about the LINK, a revolutionary "Fountain of Youth" technology that allows noninvasive refashioning of human tissue, is that it doesn't work. Hours after Erik Wei, a researcher at Ponce de León Restorative Technology, had threatened to go public with this unwelcome news, he was shot dead, and Jenna, the wunderkind boss he reported to, was arrested for his murder. Patsy's fancy footwork won the day for her back then, but now Patsy, an alcoholic with a long history of health problems, is too old and inconsistent to defend Jenna in a new case, in which she is accused of shooting Sirus Kohl--her CFO, her COO, the owner of 48% of PDRT, and, it turns out, the lover who was about to turn on her. Keera agrees to take it on, though that's not a decision she makes lightly, since from the time they were in school together, she's regarded Jenna as a narcissistic liar who certainly could have shot Kohl. The victim's daughter, PDRT general counsel Adria Kohl, certainly thinks she did, and she's willing to say whatever it takes to put Jenna away for good this time. With a mountain of circumstantial evidence against Jenna, Keera has her work cut out for her. Dugoni draws freely on a celebrated real-life criminal trial interested readers will identify within the opening pages, but the nerve-racking changes he brings to the trials of the defense are entirely his own. A cunning master class in why you should always trust your lawyer, and what it'll cost you if you do. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.