The Jezebel Remedy by Martin Clark

 

This is not as interesting a book as The Substitution Order: The voice is less breezy, the main characters are ... more idealized, I guess, even though the situation they're caught up in is probably less plausible; taking several pages to convey a countersuit in all its numbing legalese glory was a bold choice, one that really didn't work for me. There's still arguably a redemption arc, here, though the redemption feels in some ways less earned, and less central to the story. Also, the only people who actually succeed in bending the legal system to their will are the bad guys, the good guys succeed primarily because the facts of the case are on their side in spite of their opponents' chicaneries; in some ways that's ... less the unexpected course of events, I think.