‘Blonde’ fast-paced, entertaining

“Dirty Blonde”

by Lisa Scottoline (HarperCollins, 368 pages, $25.95)

Lisa Scottoline is the enormously successful author of a dozen legal thrillers, including a multinovel series about Benedetta “Bennie” Rosato and her colleagues at a fictitious women’s law firm.

But as was the case with 2005’s “Devil’s Corner,” her new book, “Dirty Blonde,” tackles murder, mayhem and the fine points of the law without the assistance of Bennie & Co.

Even without them, Scottoline’s lucky 13th book is another winner.

“Dirty Blonde” centers on Cate Fante, another gorgeous, feisty, blond (natch) lawyer who has just left one of the city’s high-powered law firms to become a U.S. district judge, her dream job – and, barring a fiasco, one that will be hers for life.

“At thirty-nine,” Scottoline writes, “Cate felt like she was joining the world’s most exclusive retirement village.”

But when Cate is assigned a contentious civil case involving an assistant district attorney who has sued a TV producer for stealing his idea for a hit television show, she is frustrated by her legal options. She gains unwanted attention when she makes a controversial ruling and offers some unorthodox remarks from the bench.

Then Cate finds herself under even more media scrutiny and in jeopardy when both the plaintiff and defendant turn up dead. It doesn’t help matters that she has reckless after-hours habits that plunge her into the midst of the murder investigation and threaten her seat on the court.

Scottoline, a lawyer-turned-writer, knows her way around a courtroom and her law books. Yet even though “Dirty Blonde” has elements of reality, readers must – happily – suspend their disbelief to be caught up in this fast-paced, entertaining yarn.

Limited by her judicial reach, Cate turns amateur sleuth, befriends a police detective, and is pursued by a few folks bent on killing her. At times she seems less like a judge than an action heroine in Manolo Blahniks.

But Scottoline is a pro. She knows how to keep the pages turning. Most readers will be helpless to resist the pull of her galloping plot.

Scottoline acknowledges the artifice and ceremony that underlie court proceedings:

“Cate strode to the dais, her robes billowing theatrically, making her feel like an actress playing a role. Someday she’d feel like she belonged in this costume, but today wasn’t the day.”

But the author also reminds readers that a trial is all too real for its participants, such as a young man facing sentencing in a drug case:

“The gallery was empty except for the defendant’s side, where an older woman sat in the front row, dabbing her eyes with a Kleenex. She wore a torn black North Face jacket and blue stretch pants, and was flanked by younger women who could have been girlfriends or sisters, because they’d been crying, too….

“The sight brought Cate to her senses. This was the most important day in their lives, and she wasn’t even paying attention.”

Scottoline has imagined such a rich, charismatic character, we can only hope she brings Cate back for another star turn in a future novel.