This was a pretty good book. It's something of a courtroom drama, and I don't read a lot of those, so in that respect it was interesting. It was also about a multiple personality case, and I'm always interested in abnormal psych.

Damian Steele is being accused of murder. He's being sued in civil court by the "widow" of Roy Nye. Roy Nye was an alternate personality of LeRoy Nye who calls himself Lee. Roy Nye was a violent, abusive, alcoholic personality who was ruining and endangering Lee's life. After extinguishing Roy, Lee divorced his wife who gave up without a fight. Much later she shows up with a flamboyant (cape-wearing!) ambulance chaser of an attorney and sues Dr. Steele for 4 million dollar.

Steele's insurance company wants to settle, but Steele believes that decision is a professional insult and hires his own attorney, Kay Kellogg.

He almost doesn't hire her, because of his attraction to her, which really ticks her off and she demands that he hire her and only fire her for professional incompetence. So that and their professional relationship sets up some conflict.

It becomes apparent that someone is after Damian, Kay, or both, and it's actually unclear which unstable character it is. That's the mystery that we don't find out until the end.

The story was very good. The character of Kay was good (you know I'm not a big fan of most heroines) and that of Damian (the important character, right?) was good also. I think the reason I gave this three stars was because there was some Beauty and the Beast stuff that I thought was just silly and I was sort of embarrased reading it. I guess I missed why that element was really part of the story, other than trying to justify its title.

But really, other than that I enjoyed it. ( )