Alternate Sides

by Marissa Piesman

Book Overview

When a corpse is found in her boyfriend Jonathan's double-parked car, New York lawyer Nina Fischman encounters a mailman moonlighting as a pimp, among other obstacles, on her way to catch a killer.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0385313551
• ISBN13: 9780385313551
• Release Date: July 1995
• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.8" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

If you like Evanovich, you'll like Piesman !

It was just dumb luck -- I was completely out of reading material and kind of grabbed just the first mystery I knew I hadn't read off the library shelf. And what a treat! Our leading lady, Nina Fischman, is to lawyers what Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum is to bounty hunters -- a self-deprecating, somewhat bumbling but lovable character who in the end, "gets her man" (in the sense of the crook!). And like Plum, the plot takes second seat to the mental ramblings, insecurities with men, relationships with family, and on and on -- heck, almost like real life! And Piesman does so with humor so on target that we felt entertained throughout, despite the relative triviality of solving the murder that gave us the excuse for the story in the first place.Nina spends the whole book debating whether to shack up with her beau Jonathan (both very casual Jews, a fact exploited for little other than some OK ethnic humor...), whether to marry him, and whether to give up her job of over a decade in Legal Services to elderly indigent folks. Everyday situations pose plenty of doubts and introspective skirmishes with herself that are both hilarious on one hand, and yet close to the bone re the human condition on the other. Indeed, who worries if they look good in orange if they've got big thighs, is a typical enigma posed to us readers somewhere along the line.Yes -- there is a plot of sorts: Johnathan's building doorman is murdered (in Johnathan's car no less as he was moving it to the alternate side of the street due to some bizarre NYC {home to our series} parking regs {hence the book's title}). In the process of not working too hard to solve it, but hard enough that the answrers came out, NIna discovers a mailman doubling as a high class call-girl pimp, a politician stalking his favorite prostitute, and several other similar characters who enliven the tale as things ultimately proceed toward some conclusions.All-in-all, hardly a cerebral escapade, nor (ala Kellerman) a treatise in Jewish Orthodoxy -- just a delightfully funny tale of life in the city for uncertain people -- aren't we all??This is apparently the fifth in Piesman's series of six total, I can't wait to go back and start at the start; recommend you do the same!