Given The Evidence

In "Given the Crime," a "wise-cracking, fast-paced thriller" "(Toronto Star)," intrepid Manhattan Assistant D.A. Susan Given took on the Mob -- and wound up in a bloody gun battle. Now, in an electrifying new novel, she faces a drug gang, a serial killer, and a former presidential adviser up to his silver-haired scalp in scandal.... As head of the Asset Forfeiture Unit in the New York County District Attorney's office, Susan Given squeezes crime kingpins where it hurts most: in their bank accounts. A single mom with an Upper East Side address, she's more than a match for the city's most wanted. But the job takes its toll, and lately Susan has lost her edge. Recurring nightmares, missed appointments...she's a woman on the verge, and seriously in need of a vacation. Good-bye East River...hello West Indies.

Yet even in the Caribbean, Susan's motto -- "crime never sleeps" -- is proven once again as she witnesses a murder and earns first place on a drug lord's hit list. Things couldn't get any crazier. Not, that is, until she returns to New York -- and to the D.A.'s office.

Her assignment: to prosecute one of the most powerful men ever to walk the halls of the White House. At the same time she has to deal with her TV-shrink ex-husband, who's threatening to take custody of their two daughters and using his TV airtime to egg on a serial killer. Then there's that drug lord, in hot pursuit. All in all, given the evidence, Susan may soon look back fondly on the days when all she had to worry about was a nervous breakdown.

A winning combination of grim reality and rueful humor, clever plotting and gripping suspense, "Given the Evidence" gives us crime fiction at its best.