Move to Strike
By Perri O'Shaughnessy
Reviewed by Ina R. Bort
From the New York Law Journal (2000)
Is the practice of law so dull that, in order to write a novel about it, one must concoct the most preposterous story possible? Certainly Perri O’Shaughnessy’s Move to Strike would suggest as much. Stories don’t get much more preposterous than this one.
Move to Strike stars Nina Reilly, babe attorney at law. Originally an appellate lawyer of some sort when she moved to Nevada, the recently-widowed Nina has since become a tireless solo practitioner who appears to specialize in cases that are without any basis in reality.
Luckily Nina’s career shift has in no way hampered her ability to maintain a steady income, not to mention a perfect figure. Quite an accomplishment on Nina’s part, seeing as she works about 90 hours a day, and has been unable to sleep since her husband’s murder. Her remaining moments of free time are spent worrying over Bob, her independent-minded teenage son.
And Bob is a constant source of worry. His grades are starting to slip, and his best friend at high school is bad girl Nikki Zack. As the book progresses, Nina’s roles as nervous mother and nervous attorney become blurred when Nikki becomes her client.
Nikki just happens to be in the market for a lawyer, having been charged with the murder of her uncle, Bill Sykes. Sykes, at least before finding himself on the wrong end of a samurai sword, had had it all: a mansion on Lake Tahoe, a beautiful wife, wonderful son, and a lucrative cosmetic surgery practice. His hobbies included nude swimming and, unfortunately for him, collecting ancient Asian instruments of death, one of which was used to slash his throat.
Nikki is the prime suspect, although by no means the only likely candidate for Sykes’ murder, given the number of enemies he managed to amass. Nikki also happens to have been the only eyewitness to the murder, as she had canoed over to Sykes’s house on the night of his death, for the express purpose of robbing him. And Nikki had good reason to want Sykes dead, as he’d recently cheated his sister Daria, Nikki’s mother, out of property that Daria inherited, and, despite his tremendous wealth, consistently refused to lend poverty-stricken Daria and Nikki a helping hand.
With Nikki’s case, Nina is stuck with terrible evidence and an uncooperative client (not to mention a flimsy plot line). Nikki, a rebellious adolescent, won’t disclose a shred of information to Nina, having learned long ago never to trust adults. A sample of her blood, meanwhile, has been found on the side of Sykes’s house, and the district attorney in charge of the case has successfully moved to have Nikki tried as an adult.
Other complications abound. For instance, Bill Sykes’s son, Chris, just happened to be killed on the same night as his father, but in an airplane crash in another state. Also bizarre is that Sykes kept, in his swimming pool, a safe that contained seemingly worthless rocks that turn out to be valuable black opals. Whether either, or both, of these fascinating developments has any bearing on Bill Sykes’s murder case is a question whose answer lies deep within the too-many pages of Move to Strike.
Shortly after becoming Nikki’s attorney, Nina retains investigator Paul van Wagoner to assist her in the pursuit of justice. Within approximately two nanoseconds of Paul’s introduction into the story, it becomes apparent that he also happens to be in pursuit of something else. Paul, as it turns out, has been lamenting his existence for the past years, specifically, his inability to maintain a sexual relationship with Nina for more than one or two nights. Nikki’s case presents him a perfect opportunity to be in regular contact with Nina once again (and, of course, to demonstrate his unflagging machismo during various chase scenes in the woods and stand-offs with unfriendly characters whom he encounters in the course of his investigation).
Together, Nina and Paul, with the assistance of Bob and other one-dimensional characters who make brief appearances throughout the story, solve the murder mystery. Surely I’m not about to tell you who the murderer turns out to be, but let’s just say that creating a mood of suspense isn’t exactly Perri O’Shaughnessy’s strong suit.
Perri, in case you were wondering, is actually two people — Mary O’Shaughnessy and Pamela O’Shaughnessy. Two sisters who are raking it in, most likely, this being their sixth "Nina Reilly" story. The book jacket says nothing about the division of labor — we can only speculate that Mary writes the books and Pamela bribes someone to publish them.
