BOOK REVIEW
'Daddy's Girl' is a letdown for Scottoline fans
by LAURA E. WINCHESTER Bee Reviewer

It's a holiday weekend. You've finally snagged the latest by one of your favorite mystery writers from the library's seven-day shelf. So you're in seventh heaven - a holiday - and time to read.

But 150 pages into "Daddy's Girl," you feel as let down by Lisa Scottoline as you do by Buffalo's fickle springtime weather. What to do? Toss it aside unfinished? Do the really unthinkable and jump to the last couple of chapters?

THIS IS A TRAIN WRECK, you think in big capital letters just like the dialogue of Paul Greco, one of three jock brothers of heroine Natalie "Nat" Greco, is always presented throughout the 14th "thriller" by Scottoline. And that's not its only annoying feature.

So far, the only action has been a riot at the prison where Natalie - like Scottoline a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania - has gone with Angus Holt, a ponytailed hipster colleague who teaches a class there. She's nearly raped, Holt's nearly killed and an inmate and guard are dead. Nat hears the guard's last words for his wife: "Tell her … it's under the floor."

What ensues after that is pretty humdrum. There's a car wreck with Angus and Nat again injured. The guard's wife is shot shortly after Nat delivers the enigmatic message. Accused of murdering a state trooper, turning down her father's offer of the best criminal lawyer money can buy and dumping her boyfriend Hank, Nat goes on the lam bent on clearing her name.

It turns out that the last few chapters are, indeed, the best. But, alas, the writing is banal, the plot predictable, and the characters too one-dimensional, especiall y "Big John," the patriarch of the Greco clan from whence the novel's title comes.

If this is your first Scottoline, no doubt you'll find it acceptable. But longtime fans will be yearning for the return of Bennie Rosati, the wiseacre South Philly lawyer. And for the fast-paced, breath-catching plots of "Mistaken Identity, "Dead Ringer" and the jaw-dropping "Killer Smile."

Scottoline's other novels have had new main characters including Mary DiNunzio and Grace Rossi, but they were women of grit who could teach Nat a thing or two - or three about gumption.

Scottoline fans will be delighted to find two references in "Daddy's Girl" to Rosati, who'll be back in the 15th thriller. At least that's what this reviewer heard at a Scottoline book-signing in Wilmington, Del., earlier this spring.

In the meantime, we'll be counting our Tastykakes 'til Bennie comes back.