Lee (Lily) White resembles Susan Isaacs's other heroines more in surface attributes than in personality or character.

Like Marcia Green, Rosie Meyers, and others, she is Jewish, well educated, and a Long Island resident. Like most contemporary women, she can worry about her nail polish or weight in idle moments without losing focus on the serious professional problems she is dealing with.

She also has a gift for sizing up a place's atmosphere or a person's attitude in a few words. Unlike previous Isaacs's heroines, who were merely witty or incisive in their observations, Lee's are often barbed. She is more critical of her relatives than of colleagues in the criminal justice world. And she seems to have no female friends outside that world. However, by the time she represents Norman, she has built up her own domestic circle, including her daughter Val, her ex-husband's brother Kent, a...