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Title: A teddy bear murder
Review: Still recovering from a near-fatal shooting in his previous outing ("There Was A Little Girl"), Calusa, Florida, lawyer Matthew Hope finds a trademark case escalating into murder.The eponymous bear is the creation of his toy-designer client, Lainie Commins, whose former employers, Etta and Brett Toland, have produced a similar cuddly toy and are about to destroy her big chance with their greater market clout.Naturally, when Brett is found murdered aboard his boat, with plenty of witnesses attesting to Lainie's presence, and her scarf found near the nude body, she is the prime suspect.Matthew's investigation proves increasingly damaging to Lainie, whose story changes with every telling. Meanwhile, Matthew's cohorts, Warren Chambers and Toots Kiley, in an entirely seperate subplot, are engaged in a drug battle on a drifting boat.McBain's laconic, mannered prose lends a familiar rythm to this well-paced story laced with moral ambiguities, some of which are Matthew's own.
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