Sonderbooks Book Review of Case of Lies

Reviewed December 11, 2005.
Delacorte Press, New York, 2005. 390 pages.
Available at Sembach Library (MCN F OSH).
Sonderbooks Stand-out 2005 (#4, Mystery)

A big thank you to my co-worker, Kim Schieber, for recommending this book to me. She suspected I would like it because it features a mathematician who is trying to solve the mysteries of the primes. She was right. Though I liked it for more than that. The heroine of the book, Nina Reilly, is a very likable character.

Nina, a lawyer who has moved back to Lake Tahoe, takes on a wrongful death lawsuit a couple of weeks before the two years to act have expired. Sara Hanna was shot in a robbery of three college students who had scored big in the casinos and then left town.

I did especially enjoy the part about the robbery victims—MIT students with a system for winning at blackjack that matches the true story featured in Bringing Down the House. That added an element of plausibility, even if I didn’t really buy the idea that someone would come up with a good method of characterizing primes and factoring large numbers. However, I couldn’t have told you anything wrong with the mathematics, even with a Master’s in Math, so it was believably over my head!

Nina Reilly is a single Mom who wants to do the right thing and get to the bottom of the case. Her search even takes her to Germany, and I liked that part, too. There’s danger, mystery, and emotion. I would like to read more of Perri O’Shaughnessy’s books.

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Book Reviews by Sondra Eklund

*****Case of Lies*

by Perry O'Shaughnessy