I was totally unable to decide what to read next so the last of the most recent sale purchases would have to do.  I’d been both drawn and repelled by Marcia Clark as an author – basically because she was the lead prosecuting attorney in O.J. Simpson case.  That’s totally unfair to her because I love reading legal thrillers by lawyer/authors. The problem is that I knew of her as an attorney first – writer second.

*******
Guilt by Association
by Marcia Clark
2011/ 432 pages
read by January LaVoy – 9h 49m
rating – B+  / crime procedural/legal
(Rachel Knight series #1) 
*******

So… the outcome is that I enjoyed it – good plot and decent writing although I was personally not interested in all the cafe lunches and fashion ensembles.  Oh well –  a heterosexual single female has to do something,  right?   And she has romance problems but that’s not too bad.  It got better as the story unfolded and I adjusted.

So on to the plot,  prosecuting attorney Rachel Knight witnesses the police hauling  one of her co-workers out of a shabby apartment.  He’s dead and it was either a murder or a suicide.

Meanwhile,  the bright and lovely 15-year old daughter of one of the Los Angeles’ elite families has been raped in her very own 2nd story bedroom.   Suspicion automatically falls on the young man she tutors as a private school project,  but the victim says absolutely not.   This young man disappears amongst his very rough friends and a bad part of town.

Knight wants to get to the bottom of both cases because 1.  she thought she was a friend of her co-worker,  but he apparently had a secret life,   and 2. she’s been assigned to this very strange rape case.

So Knight and her friend Bailey Keller of the LAPD do their investigation which includes help from sources ranging from other cops and attorneys to the young street thugs and gang members.  Lots of characters,  some sympathetic, others gritty,  all fairly realistic (to me),   And the setting feels like L.A. due to the variety of characters.

Overall it’s not a bad book – I might try the second in the series.  We’ll see.