Brotherly Love - Hardcover

Sibling rivalry and the suggestion that a PI's supposedly dead brother is still alive power a fast-paced, though not always convincing, first novel. While reading the newspaper, brassy Manhattanite Sydney Sloane learns of a jailbreak by convicted murderer Noah Alexander. The prisoner's mug shot surprises her, for "Noah" bears an amazing resemblance to her older brother David, thought to have been killed in Israel. Although Sydney considered David an unlovable jerk during his verifiable lifetime, she doesn't think him capable of murder and sets out to prove Noah/David's innocence. Her investigation becomes problematic when gun-toting goons also descend on the trail, someone kills Noah's girlfriend and Sydney (who's openly lesbian) falls for the 25-year-old daughter of a murder victim. While the heroine's casual, often flip narration hastens this story along, some details fail to ring true: Sydney takes David's apparent return frm the dead quite calmly, exhibits little fear when confronted in her apartment by a hulking man and easily locates New Yorkers quite willing to assist with her detective work. Nonetheless, Lordon's first effort proves entertaining, if not particularly taut.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

First-novelist Lordon introduces N.Y.C.'s Sydney Sloane, a lesbian p.i. whose black-sheep brother David supposedly died 15 years ago, but who looks remarkably like the newspaper photograph of escaped double-homicide perpetrator Noah Alexander. While Sydney's p.i. partner Max lolls on the beach with a cutie, Sydney concentrates on finding David/Noah--discovering along the way his girlfriend (soon murdered), a crib-age nephew, and a wealthy man of mystery and muscle, Caleb Simeon, who's also looking for David for unspecified (at first) reasons. Backtracking to the double murder, Sydney interviews the liquor store owner's widow, and further questioning reveals that her husband may have been having an affair with Mildred Keller, the customer who died with him. Convinced her con artist/forger brother is innocent, Sydney quickly runs afoul of the real killer--but not before her brother reappears, then dies, and Caleb and his goon put in another appearance. Interesting premise, poor resolution. Sydney and Max, though, make a moderately entertaining pair and, with wiser plotting and a more fulsome denouement to their cases, will be welcome a second time around. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.