Suze U. (A-Z) reviewed on 1/27/2006 + 181 more book reviews

Not only is Philly Prep teacher Amanda Pepper able to launch her vacation with a free junket to Atlantic City, ``America's Number One Vacation Destination,'' but she and her photographer friend Sasha Berg, in town for a shoot, get a breathtaking upgrade at their casino hotel. The only fly in the ointment is financial advisor Jesse Reese, to whose usual suite they've been moved--and who seems so determined to hang on to it that he turns up bludgeoned to death in Sasha's bed. When witnesses identify Sasha as the woman on Reese's arm on his way up to the suite, and Sasha's alibi turns out to be anything but a stand-up guy (a glaring loose end, this), the police move to downgrade her accommodations. It's up to Mandy (With Friends Like These..., 1993) and her sometime lover, Philly cop C.K. Mackenzie, to smash the frame--though C.K. proves to be little help. As Mandy uncovers evidence of Reese's schemes to defraud trusting senior citizens on a grand scale, she starts to see so many of the locals as potential scam victims- -Reese's brassy widow, Poppy; his former partner, Ray Palford; a homeless woman named Georgette who jealously guards her stretch of the boardwalk--that you'd think the town had hung out a banner for a Fleeced by Reese convention. So the mystery's not much of a stretch for Mandy, despite a lineup of zany suspects who keep popping up as abruptly as jack-in- the-boxes...or casino staffers. As usual, Roberts's sprightly heroine is much more engaging than the story she has to tell

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