After three months, Emma is beginning to settle in at her new office. Senior partner Louis Brisbane unexpectedly asks to meet with her. Frightened that she has committed some grievous error, she ascends to his fortieth floor office with trepidation. To her delight, he offers her an assignment to work on a trust and estate matter.

Oak Greythorne, a life long friend of Brisbane’s has died. Brisbane has been named executor of the will. Since Greythorne had never married and had no close relatives, he had decided to put his sizable estate in trust to be used for the prevention and treatment of alcohol and drug abuse, the prevention and treatment of mental illness, and health care for the poor.

To carry out these requests, Brisbane is empowered to liquidate Greythorne’s real estate assets, and he wants to vacate the apartment building that Greythorne owned and lived in. Emma’s assignment will be to draft a letter serving notice to the tenants of the building that their leases will be terminated for which they will receive a small monetary compensation. She is to keep Brisbane informed of their responses, and may offer them slightly more money if they are reluctant to cooperate.

To be chosen to work on an assignment overseen by a senior partner seems to Emma to be a step on the road to partnership, the holy grail of lawyers. However, there is something about Brisbane’s demeanor that unsettles Emma. This feeling of unease is compounded when Emma meets Tommy Corona, who appears to be an archetypical mob boss, but is, according to Brisbane, a highly successful building contractor with whom Brisbane has done business for years. Emma has little desire to rub shoulders with the Mafia, but career advancement is appealing, the objectives of Greythorne’s trust seem worthy, and her involvement will be straightforward enough.

Blind Trust is a legal mystery with a slight atypical focus. There are no courtroom scenes or haggling over semantics in legal documents so dear to the hearts of lawyers. In fact, the novel is one step removed from a cozy mystery. The main protagonist is not an amateur sleuth, but a lawyer, and police involvement in the matter is minimal. Emma has a legitimate interest in investigating the purported suicide death of Greythorne since she is helping to administer the estate, but she has no legal right to do so.

The major shortcoming of Blind Trust is its predictability. Every action that one would expect to happen does and in roughly the manner one would imagine. There are some scenes where a surprise might be anticipated, or, in fact, welcomed, but the expected outcome obtains. The characters, while well depicted in that they act as their personalities would indicate, offer little suspense. The one notable exception is our heroine in the final chapters of the story. She had previously been shown to be a cautious, timid individual who takes no chances. Yet, in the end, she takes off on her own without informing anyone, showing a recklessness which seems totally out of character.

The action takes place in Chicago, but, except for references to upscale restaurants unique to the city, there is little to remind the reader that this is Chicago rather than some other American metropolis. Because Chicago does have its own flavor, geography, and history, it is a shame some of that did not through in the novel.

While there are no surprises in the story, the action unfolds logically and consistently. It is light on violence, even with a nod to the Mafia, and there is enough of a romantic element to appeal to fans of romantic suspense. Blind Trust is a pleasant but totally predictable tale.

--Andy Plonka