My Cousin Skinny

Copperman’s follow-up to And Justice for Mall requires skillful legal maneuvers from a shrewd attorney dealing with an outrageous cast of characters. Los Angeles lawyer Sandy Moss flies home to New Jersey for a family wedding, dreading every minute that she’ll have to spend with her extended family. She barely knows the bride-to-be, her cousin Stephanie, also known as Skinny. At the rehearsal dinner, Sandy wonders why Skinny is spending so long in the kitchen. Then Skinny emerges, screaming and covered in blood, with a knife in her hand. There’s a corpse in the kitchen, but Skinny insists she didn’t kill the person, and she wants Sandy to defend her. Sandy’s whole life and work is in LA, but she can’t refuse a request from family, so she juggles her LA cases with her cousin’s hearings and trial in New Jersey, where the county prosecutor seems to have a vendetta against her. On top of all this, there’s her flaky cousin. Skinny seems prepared to take outrageous plea deals, and it may take a miracle to get her off.