Lady Killer (2008)

In the best-selling author's 15th novel, Lady Killer, yet another legal thriller centered on saucy Italian-American attorney Mary DiNunzio, Lida Scottoline turns out one stale cannoli. DiNunzio is a girl-done-good from South Philly who uses her lawyerly skills to help out folks from the old neighborhood. But when the Queen of the Mean Girls from her high school days goes missing, along with her abusive, Mob-linked boyfriend, Mary is pushed back into the fold. Alas, Scottoline, herself a real-life lawyer, creates a protagonist both laughably credulous and strangely ill-informed, and her Scooby-Doo-meets-The Sopranos capers only stretch the reader's disbelief further. C-