Turnabout

Sometimes the trick in life is knowing when to forgive and when to seek revenge. After an illicit sexual encounter on a business trip in Disneyworld, Nicole Fisher has quit her job as a successful Chicago law partner at Winters & Early in order to save her marriage. Nicole and her husband Michael have sold their North Shore lakefront home to Winters' head of litigation, Winston Bigelow, who has torn it down to build a McMansion and an enormous beach house. Facing his sixtieth birthday, Winston announces to his shocked wife Pam, a Wilmette yoga instructor, that he is quitting his job and leaving her and their son to study philosophy at the University of Chicago. Meanwhile, the Fisher and Bigelow children prepare for Turnabout, a New Trier High School dance, including picture-taking and an afterparty at the Bigelow villa. After Nicole reveals a secret about her sexual indiscretion, and as tensions in the Bigelow household build, a murder occurs on Turnabout night. Prosecutor Meredith Bennett investigates the murder. While she works to solve the crime, she also struggles with the growing attraction between her and her ex-husband Alex, who divorced her four years ago to marry Shawna, a much younger woman. Turnabout is fair play -- or is it? Meredith Bennett makes her third appearance here, continuing a story begun in Hope Sheffield's earlier mysteries, Blood Mother and The Inflatable Man.