The Trials of Nikki Hill

Out-of-control cops. High-priced defense attorneys. Missing evidence. Lying suspects. A system that sometimes works-and sometimes doesn't. In fifteen years as deputy district attorney in Los Angeles, Christopher Darden has seen it all-including the inner workings of the O. J. Simpson murder trial. Now he brings his vision, experience, and a dead-on ear for street-smart dialogue to a novel that is far more than a legal thriller.

THE TRIALS OF NIKKI HILL is a tour de force, a riveting tale of murder, and a wild ride through the Los Angeles criminal justice system. Your guide is Nicolette Hill, a beautiful and ambitious young black prosecutor on her way up in the district attorney's office and a heroine for the new millennium.

Nikki has a career but not a life, an expensive house but no dining room table, and a serious lack of romance. On top of this, Nikki has just been handed the high-profile case of her career: the body of Maddie Gray, host of TV's most popular tabloid news show, has been found in a Dumpster in South Central gangland.

The police immediately have a suspect in Jamal Deschamps, a young black man arrested at the scene with Maddie's ring in his pocket. Then the airtight case against him springs some big-time leaks-sending Nikki and a quirky team of homicide detectives scrambling to find the real killer, while an army of attorneys, spin doctors, crooked cops, and case-hardened gangstas starts working overtime to make the wheels of justice spin just the way they want.

When Nikki finally gets a suspect whose guilt she can believe in-this time it's a famous African-American R&B diva-the case may already be doomed. From South Central homeboys in baggy pants to courthouse hitters in three-piece suits, THE TRIALS OF NIKKI HILL captures men and women in the often chaotic pursuit of a thing called justice-and one particular woman courageously fighting her way through the system, with her career, her pride, and her life hanging in the balance.
Christopher Darden was brought in to give the O.J.

Simpson prosecution team extra strength and a racial balance. His disdain for the defendant seemed real, his anger genuine, his motives strictly judicial. These same qualities give his first mystery a definite edge--honed by a collaboration with the excellent mystery writer and critic Dick Lochte. Like Darden, Nikki Hill has been sent to a prosecutorial purgatory--suburban Compton.

She's then called back to downtown L.A. because the new black district attorney, Joe Walden, wants her race, plus her sex and brains, on his team following the death of a talk-show personality. The chief suspects are all African Americans. Nikki, the thirtysomething daughter of a cold and distant cop, is a very interesting character--burned out at work and still recovering from the loss of a lover, but soft and human enough to take chances on both fronts.

And she gets some strong support, especially from a wise old detective named Ed Goodman who has many of the qualities of the memorable Leo G. Bloodworth, the private eye in Lochte's Sleeping Dog. Her boss is a believably conflicted bureaucrat; the bad guys--a powerful black music mogul, his movie-star icon of a wife, their backup team of slick lawyers, street gangsters, crooked cops, and a world-class dirty trickster from Washington who describes himself as "a Stealth scumbag"--are eminently worthy opponents.

The weird ending leaves much to be desired, but maybe next time these two smart writers will fashion a stronger finale. Until then, you can enjoy Lochte's wonderful New Orleans mysteries: Blue Bayou and The Neon Smile. --Dick Adler