A review by lgpiper
Death Turns a Trick by Julie Smith

3.0

Rebecca Schwartz is a perfectly respectable San Francisco lawyer who just happens to represent a group known as HYENA (Head Your Ethics toward a New Age), who are in favor of legalizing prostitution and who organize a local demonstration to promote same that is known as the Strumpet Strut. One of the people she has gotten to know through her work with HYENA is Elena Mooney, who runs a co-op bordello.

Elena is hosting a party for the FDOs (Friday Downtown Operators) at her co-op bordello and finds that the pianist she engaged for the party has become ill. So, she inveigles Rebecca into tarting herself up a bit and filling in as the pianist. At some time during the evening, the party is raided by people who are ostensibly from the police. Elena gets Rebecca to sneak out the back with a client who is a well known local politician. On the way away from the scene, Rebecca has an automobile accident. Rather than staying around to be rescued, the politician flees the scene.

Rebecca spends some time at the police station, but eventually gets home. When she arrives, she finds that one of the guests from the party has been murdered in her living room. The guest goes by the name of Kandi, and is a "working girl". She is also, it turns out, the sister of Rebecca's current boy friend and escort at the party, one Parker Phillips. In addition to finding Kandi murdered, Rebecca sees that her apartment has been tossed. She also finds a rather sizable wad of cash hidden in one of her house plants. So what to do?

Rebecca tries to stay out of the investigation, but keeps getting pulled in. We end up with crooked politicians, a bent cop, who tries to frame and then murder Rebecca. And so forth. A fairly fun rollick.