The Trials of Nikki Hill

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When TV presenter Maddie Gray's body is found dumped in gangland LA, the police arrest a young black man found at the scene with Maddie's ring in his pocket. For Nikki Hill, an ambitious Afro-American attorney, it is a make-or-break case.Amazon.com ReviewChristopher Darden was brought in to give the O.J. Simpson prosecution team extra strength and a racial balance. His disdain for the defendant seemed real, his anger genuine, his motives strictly judicial. These same qualities give his first mystery a definite edge--honed by a collaboration with the excellent mystery writer and critic Dick Lochte. Like Darden, Nikki Hill has been sent to a prosecutorial purgatory--suburban Compton. She's then called back to downtown L.A. because the new black district attorney, Joe Walden, wants her race, plus her sex and brains, on his team following the death of a talk-show personality. The chief suspects are all African Americans.Nikki, the thirtysomething daughter of a cold and distant cop, is a very interesting character--burned out at work and still recovering from the loss of a lover, but soft and human enough to take chances on both fronts. And she gets some strong support, especially from a wise old detective named Ed Goodman who has many of the qualities of the memorable Leo G. Bloodworth, the private eye in Lochte's Sleeping Dog. Her boss is a believably conflicted bureaucrat; the bad guys--a powerful black music mogul, his movie-star icon of a wife, their backup team of slick lawyers, street gangsters, crooked cops, and a world-class dirty trickster from Washington who describes himself as "a Stealth scumbag"--are eminently worthy opponents.The weird ending leaves much to be desired, but maybe next time these two smart writers will fashion a stronger finale. Until then, you can enjoy Lochte's wonderful New Orleans mysteries: Blue Bayou and The Neon Smile. --Dick AdlerFrom Publishers WeeklyNot surprisingly, this solid collaboration between ex-prosecutor Darden (In Contempt) and mystery novelist Lochte (Neon Smile, etc.) is about a high-profile murder case as seen by the Los Angeles D.A.'s office?but it's not about that high-profile murder case. Young, brilliant black prosecutor Nikki Hill, exiled to Compton after her 15 minutes of legal fame, is recalled to L.A. to become special assistant to District Attorney Joe Walden when the naked body of TV gossipmonger Maddie Gray is found in an alley dumpster and street punk Jamal Deschamps is caught stealing a diamond ring from the corpse. Case closed, or so it seems. But it turns out that Jamal, the obvious suspect, was chased into that alley by a gang called the Crazy Eights, and that the dead woman was blackmailing celebrities?including one who was last seen with her the day she died. As if taking cues from the TV series Law and Order, the plot unfolds both in the DA's office and through the murder investigation, the latter hampered by disappearing evidence and a leak inside the police department. Nikki also has a suspicious new boyfriend, whose advent into her life coincides with anonymous telephone reminders of a guilty secret. This is a sturdily built crime novel, written in a sharp, cinema-friendly style in which the good news (every scene reveals another kink in the complex plot) is balanced by the bad (the puzzle-pieces are often far-flung and less than revelatory). The ending strains credulity, but for the most part Darden and Lochte lead a stimulating investigation into the intersections, and racial tensions, among the dispossessed, the wealthy and a legal system that purports to dispense justice to both in equal measure. Agent, Mel Berger at William Morris. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.