From Publishers Weekly
Its plot straining credulity at key junctures, Lucke's first mystery, featuring a sympathetic San Francisco artist and private investigator and her long-absent father, is too contrived to convince. Twenty years earlier, when Jessica Randolph was a baby, she and her mother were abandoned by her father, Allen Fraser. Out of the blue, Fraser suddenly calls to ask for her help, believing he's a suspect in the murder of socialite Deborah Collingwood, the daughter of his business partner; after first refusing to talk to him, Jess then urges him to go to the police. Fraser is unwilling: before he left the victim the night she was killed, she gave him an emerald necklace to hold for her father, an item the police are looking for. Finally deciding Fraser isn't the murderer, Jess determines to clear his name when he's charged and jailed. Although Jess's ruminations on her returned father ring true, improbable plot twists undermine the believability of the whole.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Kirkus Reviews
Yet another plucky California p.i. debut--San Francisco's Jessica Randolph, who works for Parks & O'Meara Investigations (O'Meara's a dog). Her case: to prove that her father, who abandoned her years ago, did not murder his business partner's daughter, Debbie Collington, after escorting her to the Art & Flowers Ball. Like Jess, Debbie was estranged from her dad, and tabloid pictures showed her cavorting on the yacht of Colombian emerald/cocaine-importer Guillermo Reyes. Then Jess discovers Debbie's emerald necklace was really paste; a wildly expensive oil painting was stolen from her apartment (did her boyfriend Peter Brockway love her or her valuables?); and sweet Debbie was actually a blackmailer. Who was her target? Her own dad? Jess's dad? Or? Another murder occurs, a plane ticket is fudged, and the art thief is accosted before Deb's murder is brought to justice, and Jess and her father begin, tentatively, a small friendship. Earnest, simplistic, contrived--with a dull heroine, some unengaging romantic twinges, and a gooey (to say the least) father- daughter rapproachment. First, alas, in a series. -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
