by Hai Shunxi

Created on: June 10, 2010

Buried deep in every thriller writer's closet must be a box wrapped in yellow crime-scene tape, closed by myriad hasps and padlocks;, and emblazoned with "Open Only in Case of Emergency!" in bold red letters. Most writers leave their box sealed forever, for to break the seals opens the author to ridicule and scorn. Yet some, perhaps desperate to complete that six-book contract, finally cut the tape, open the box, and dump its contents onto the desk.

One can only imagine the scene: out flutters a single folded sheet of paper, sealed with a bit of Scotch tape and bearing the neatly-printed label "Desperation Plot Device." With trembling hands, the writer slits the tape and unfolds the sheet to find just five words: EVIL TWIN SEPARATED AT BIRTH. There may be no plot device in literature more redolent of shark-jumping than this, a plot device from whose use authors rarely recover.

Legal thriller writer Lisa Scottoline is one of the few to survive its use intact, having played the card reasonably well in the 1999 Bennie Rosato courtroom drama Mistaken Identity. Rosato's the good twin, Alice Connelly the evil interloper whom Rosato must defend in a murder case. It went well, especially when compared to ditz-lit series installments featuring Mary DiNunzio. It was not, however, good enough for Scottoline to make a second trip to the well. But she did: Think Twice.

A rare reunion of the sisters goes sour when Alice dumps roofies in Bennie's wine, then shoves her twin into a pine box and buries it in a remote hayfield. Alice steals Bennie's car and ID, kills her dog, seduces her ex-boyfriend, and assumes her identity at the office. She then proceeds to clean out Bennie's bank accounts (to the tune of several million) and book a flight to the Bahamas, all the while presenting herself as Bennie to the associates at Rosato and to Bennie's ex-lover, Grady. Damn, she's good!

Meanwhile Bennie awakens in a buried wooden box. Between her perseverance and twin visits from deus ex machina, Bennie frees herself only to end up in an above-ground mess. Half-naked, lacking ID, and "raving" about an evil twin who tried to murder her, Bennie lacks much credibility out in the sticks as the universe conspires against her by sending every contact she has in the Philly PD and DA's office on vacation simultaneously. Meanwhile, Alice's easy manipulation of the princess of gullible-land (DiNunzio) places roadblock after roadblock in Bennie's path back.

As Bennie closes in on her twin, even

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