Scottoline's Fans Should Feel Betrayed by This One

Betrayed - Lisa Scottoline

You may think your day has been shitty, but it’s a strong bet that you’ve got nothing on Judy Carrier… let me back up a bit. Carrier, low woman on the totem pole at Rosato and Associates (all-woman law firm [hmmm: do I hear a reverse discrimination suit in the works?] in Philly) has had a helluva week. The boss dumped a stack of 70-plus civil cases on her. They’re not only boring, they offend her sensibilities. And then she gets a call from her favorite aunt announcing that the woman has breast cancer and will be going under the knife in a couple of days. And then her mother, with whom Carrier has a prickly relationship, shows up in town. And then her boyfriend Frank turns out to be a loser… 

On top of all that, Aunt Barb’s good gardening buddy, Iris, turns up dead. Carrier and her aunt are, of course, certain the circumstances of the undocumented Mexican woman’s death are suspicious, though the cops aren’t. With only hours before Aunt Barb goes all Amazon, Carrier starts snooping, as is the wont of the women of Rosato. She’s going to learn a hell of a lot more about a lot of things in the next couple of days; not least that someone has been Betrayed.

Judy Carrier, along with Bennie Rosato and Mary Dinunzio, is a set character in Philadelphia lawyer-turned-author Lisa Scottoline’s Rosato and Associates mystery series. Most of the earlier mysteries in Scottoline's series have featured either the dithering, ditsy Dinunzio or the brilliant but socially-inept Rosato¹, with Carrier usually serving merely as backup in the featured character's dumber antics or as a sort of comic relief - mainly due to her rather strange fashion sense. This time, Carrier takes the lead.

Or she would take the lead if Betrayed actually had a plot for her to lead. It’s such a mishmash of plot threads, all competing to see which one will cause Carrier the most problems, that none of them ever reaches the level of being interesting. The ostensible mystery – the dead woman would “never drive with her window down because it would muss her hair” – sucks royally, the motivation of the villain(s) is weak and lacks a foundation, and most of all, the mystery only occupies about a quarter of the page space. The rest is given over to family drama, boyfriend drama, and a skosh of career drama,

Like the Rosato and Associates series? Well, you’ve been Betrayed this time. Scottoline must’ve phoned this one in, because – even for a series that’s already fairly weak – it’s just plain lousy.

¹ - no word on where Anne Murphy is for this installment in the series. Maybe she disappeared in the last one, which I admit I skipped.