Name: Acts of Malice
ISBN: 9780440225812

Perri O'Shaughnessy

When defense attorney Nina Reilly takes the case of Jim Strong, a member of one of South Lake Tahoe's most prominent families, who has been accused of killing his brother, she finds her life threatened by a terrifying confrontation with a psychopath. Reprint.

Acts of Malice

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This is the first book I've read by this author. Despite not having read the preceding 4 books in the series, it wasn't difficult to pick up on the characters and their relationships to each other. 

Nina Reilly is an attorney in Lake Tahoe who lands a client charged with the murder of his brother. At first, the death looked like a ski accident, but was later upgraded to a homicide. The author does a nice job building suspense by leaving the reader unsure as to whether her client, Jim Strong, is a victim of overzealous prosecution or a sociopath, liar, and murderer. The Lake Tahoe setting was also well done, with a definite sense of place.


Acts of Malice was entertaining and was just enough to hold my attention despite occasional weak or unnatural-sounding dialogue and a few plot elements that seemed very farfetched. The rapid pace of Nina's courtship with the prosecutor, Collier, seemed artificially rushed. The fact that a prosecutor and defense attorney who are assigned to the same first degree murder case are romantically involved without raising any ethical flags as long as they don't talk about the case at home was not very believable. As the story build to the final climax, the main characters didn't seem too concerned that a murderer with a grudge against them was on the loose and set themselves up for trouble, not exactly how most people would behave in a similar situation. Still, I would pick up another of her titles to read. 

This was an entertaining read as long as you're not expecting a hard hitting legal thriller, but more of an entertaining and light suspense story. I gave it 2.5 stars and rounded up to 3.

Acts of Malice

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