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So many books and so little time in which to try and read them all! I'm forever on the lookout for ways to spot quickly, a good read, and I've been browsing recently, the lists of various university presses to see what academia deems worthy of publication. Hardly the place to find a whodunnit you might think and I was surprised too, to find Marianne Wesson's Chilling Effect listed in the University Press of Colorado's catalogue between two non-fiction books on the history of war.

Wesson's protagonist, Lucinda Hayes practices as an attorney in downtown Boulder, Colorado and the story revolves around her pursuit and investigation of the various legal remedies available or not, to her new client - the mother of a murdered little girl. We learn the identity of the killer very early in the book (a young man hooked on watching snuff movies) and the novel focuses instead on an exploration of the complexities of the apportionment of blame for such a crime. How much is attributable to the murderer himself, how much to those people who sell or hire out the snuff movies and other violent pornography, and to the film production companies, the movie actors?

Marianne Wesson draws fully on the expertise gleaned from her day job as a professor of law and she presents compellingly and clearly for the lay person, the intricasies of the fine points of law she raises here. She includes a thought-provoking exploration of the limitations or not, that might or ought, curtail the protection offered by the USA's First Amendment (the Freedom of Speech bit). And above all, she gives the mystery fan a very absorbing read indeed. And the best news? You can find two more Lucinda Hayes mysteries in this series!

Google 'Moira Richards' to find links to her essays on Women Abuse, her reviews of woman-authored books as well as to other writing and editing work she does for various print and e-publications. She can often be found lounging about the staff rooms ofwomenwriters.net, absolutewrite.com and moondance.org - usually sipping tea, sometimes Jack Daniels.

Off-line, she teaches accounting and other numberly subjects to students at the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in South Africa. And writes a poem or two.