Authors: Lia Matera. Martin Greenberg.
Hardcover, 368 pages
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication Date: 1999-12-01
Edition: 1st

Reviews :

   

This collection of original stories from today's most successful, prize-winning writers of crime fiction proves that "irreconcilable differences" can't begin to describe the lethal results of a relationship gone wrong.

For this outstanding anthology, editor Lia Mcitera challenged a stellar list of contributors including National Book Award Winner Joyce Carol Oates, New York Times bestsellers Edna Buchanan and Jeffery Deaver, and award winners Laurie R. King, Julie Smith, Bill Pronzini, Margaret Moron, and Marcia Muller to use the phrase "irreconcilable differences" as a springboard for a story. Their responses make for irresistible reading. These twenty concoctions of mystery and suspense move from sharp and probing to humorous and sly, fully evoking the theme of discord most deadly.

Here are the clever twists and chilling turns of breakups, family feuds, broken partnerships, and lovers' quarrels. A coupletakes witty revenge on their honeymooning exes in Judith Kelmon's "Just Desserts." Gillian Roberts's "Heart Break" explores the dark side of staying together. In Sarah Lovett's "Buried Treasure," a hint-dropping stranger changes the life of an imperiled widow, while Jon Burke shows how a Good Samaritan can save a bad marriage in "An Unsuspected Condition of the Heart."

As this acclaimed cast of authors probes the minefield of intimacy, devotion, and trust upon which human lives are built, Irreconcilable Differences explodes with heart-stopping events. ...

Authors: Lia Matera.
Mass Market Paperback, pages
Publisher: Fawcett
Publication Date: 1992-01-22


Reviews :

    Willa Jansson has always thought of herself as a right-thinking left-wing lawyer. But when her radical San Francisco law firm closes after the murder of its chief rabble-rouser, she does the next worst thing and takes a job as a high-priced corporate attorney. Willa has misgivings almost immediately, as she realizes all is not calm behind the firm's stately oak doors. After all, she's been around danger before, and she, can smell murder in the air.

Sure enough, two partners are killed. Unfortunately, the popular misconception is that the storm is blowing in from her direction. Hassled now by the police, her parents, and office politics of the murdering kind, Willa is forced to play hardball with the big boys, before the third strike is called on her.......

Authors: Lia Matera.
Paperback, 272 pages
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: 2002-04-05


Reviews :

   

Never before have the stakes been so high, or so personal, for "one of the most articulate and surely the wittiest of women sleuths at large in the genre" (The New York Times Book Review). As she investigates the mysterious disappearance of her own peacenik mother, Willa finds herself doing the Havana Twist.

Attorney Willa Jansson has finally managed to unload some of her sixties baggage, but her rebellious mother can't seem to mellow out. When Mom heads to Cuba with a band of graying "brigadistas" Willa figures it's just a pilgrimage to lefty Graceland. But then the rest of the group returns without her mother, and Willa fears the worst. Risking disbarment for "trading with the enemy" she rushes to the rescue -- and discovers that her mother may have finally gotten herself into more trouble then she can get herself out of.

In a deadly game of cat and mouse, Willa follows her mother's path from Havana to Mexico City, from California back to Havana, getting manipulated, misled, and nearly arrested along the way. Soon she finds two angry governments, at least one ruthless killer, and her old flame, homicide Lieutenant Surgelato, are hot on her trail. Racing against time, Willa realizes that, much more than politics and police work, it is intuition that will help her find her mother -- and those things that only a daughter knows....

    Too often, the tension in a mystery flows from the same source as in a horror movie: As the character walks alone toward the empty, sinister house at night (of course), the audience collectively wrings its hands and groans, "Don't go in there." One can't help but wish that she or he were endowed with a little more common sense. Carry a flashlight, call for backup--something, for God's sake.

Fortunately, Havana Twist offers an antidote to that cliche in Willa Jansson, a no-nonsense Santa Cruz lawyer whose good judgement is matched only by her wry sense of humor--though sometimes neither is enough to keep her out of trouble. And this time, it's her own mother who has put her there.

When Jansson's political-activist mom doesn't return from Cuba with her group of "Jewish mothers of politics, ready to chicken-soup the whole third world," Willa must travel to the Communist island in search of her "Superlefty" mother. Jansson keeps a low profile as she searches Havana's dilapidated neighborhoods, trusting few with the fact of her mother's disappearance--and with good reason. The city's ubiquitous hotel room bugs, vanishing informants, and tight-lipped locals create a shifty atmosphere in which the unspoken can be as revealing as the spoken.

While smartly pursuing her mother's whereabouts and trying to stay out of jail, Willa manages to find a little time for a romance of sorts, although she's not unaware of the irony in her attraction to the police detective who was once almost fired because of her mother's police protest.

Matera adeptly adds unforeseen twists and turns to the plot, though she leaves it up to the reader to ponder which clues are bona fide and which are dead-ends. Matera has a knack for characterization and dialogue, and her contrast between Cuba's bleak economy, Mexico City's gaudy commercialism, and the U.S.'s comparative wealth adds a little sociopolitical weight to the story. Smart, sensible Willa Jansson is a pleasure to accompany on her search for that grey-haired brigadista she calls Mom. --Kris Law...

Authors: Lia Matera.
Mass Market Paperback, pages
Publisher: Fawcett
Publication Date: 1993-02-22


Reviews :

    "Matera is a solid writer. Her dialogue is pungent and her plotting careful."

Detroit Free Press

Everything Laura Di Palma owns she has earned -- including a resounding case of depression and job dissatisfaction as a rising young star in San Francisco's high-powered law circles. Taking off and taking stock, Laura has escaped to the country with her battered and taciturn lover, Hal.

But Laura's idyll doesn't last long. Her former lover, private detective Sandy Arkelett, shows up with the disturbing, emotional case of a young woman's suicide -- which may have been encouraged by her husband. As confused lives and twisted motives swirl around her, Laura discovers that morality and honesty are often at odds with each other, and may have nothing to do with the truth...

"With plenty of action and mystery, this is sensitive, thought-provoking writing."

Winston-Salem Journal

"Matera takes on social and moral issues. She also delivers the goods a mystery writer should, with intelligence, humor, and gutsy femininity."

Robert Campbell...

Authors: Lia Matera.
Mass Market Paperback, 168 pages
Publisher: Bantam
Publication Date: 1987-07-01

Authors: Lia Matera.
Mass Market Paperback, pages
Publisher: Bantam
Publication Date: 1988-06-01


Reviews :

    Laura Di Palma finally has it made. Eleven years ago, she ran from a broken marriage and her small northern California town in search of fame and fortune. As the smartest and most controversial young defense attorney in her high-class law firm, she found it. But she's got an old grudge back home that she can't let die. So she's moving back to ruin her ex-husband's career by taking the job he wants as public defender -- just long enough to make him squirm.
Once she evens up the score, Laura can go back to her big city life. Unfortunately, a few things get in the way, including two murders, a crazed killer on the loose, old wounds that haven't healed, and a forgotten feeling that Laura is almost afraid to name . . . .
"Laura Di Palma is one of the most compelling characters in recent mystery fiction." -- The Baltimore Sun...

Authors: Lia Matera.
Hardcover, 209 pages
Publisher: MacMillan Publishing Company.
Publication Date: 1999-05
Edition: Standard print hardcover ed

Reviews :

    Overworked, overcaffeinated, and as cranky as a sequestered jury, Willa Jansson has a law review to get out. As second in command to the brilliant Susan Green, the ideal law student and perfect editor, Willa's rank jumps up a step when Susan's head is bashed in over a brief at the law review office.

Everyone at Malhousie, the small San Francisco law school, is stunned by the crime -- including professors and the staff at the review. And none of them are above suspicion. Willa, now in charge and none too happy about it, launches a private investigation that succeeds not only in compromising her honor, but getting her arrested, as she chases one blind lead after another and comes face-to-face with the banality of evil.......

Authors: Lia Matera.
Audio Cassette, pages
Publisher: Sunset Productions
Publication Date: 1996-11


Reviews :

    Willa Jansson's friend, Arthur, is under suspicion when his assistant is murdered--a Kwakiutl shaman also working for a reclusive computer designer. Hiding out in a mountain cabin, Willa and Arthur barely evade arrest--and the real killer--long enough to learn that age-old truths can come in high-tech packages. Based on the June '96 hardcover release from Simon & Schuster. 2 cassettes....

    In Last Chants, Willa Jansson jumps to the defense of Arthur Kenna, an eccentric mythologist. Suspected of having done away with his assistant, an Indian shaman who was helping him program a computer in the mystic arts, Arthur flees to a cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains with Willa in tow. As she searches for clues at the scene of the crime, a magnetic power spot in the wilderness that attracts New Agers and computer junkies, she flushes out more than she bargained for, including two industrial spies, a family of mushroom hunters and a hairy, naked man who claims to be the demigod Pan. ...

Authors: Lia Matera.
Mass Market Paperback, 149 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Publication Date: 1991-10-13


Reviews :

    "Has almost everytrhing a good mystery needs...a complex plot, social commentary, loads of atmosphere and a cast of unusual characters...The reader wants to hang out with Jansson and see more of her clear-eyed view of the world."
SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
Working for a fat-cat San Francsico law firm, Willa Jansson thought she'd seen everything. Then her boss dies from hemlock poisoning. Things go from awful to outrageous when Willa's rad-lib mother, a former client of the deceased, is suspiciously named in his will to inherit his fantastic home in the hills. By now Willa is frantic to discover what's going on around her. Poking into the recent past and the apolitical present, she fishes out an old boyfriend she'd rather forget, a cop she hates on principle, and a famous law firm that can barely make ends meet. It's a pretty good catch for a first-year associate--considering that, in the meantime, someone is trying to kill her.......

Authors: Lia Matera.
Hardcover, 176 pages
Publisher: Five Star (ME)
Publication Date: 2000-06
Edition: 1st