KATE WILHELM – Malice Prepense. Barbara Holloway #3. St. Martin’s, hardcover, 1996. Reprinted in paperback as For the Defense (Fawcett, 1997).

   Kate Wilhelm is the· author of over 30 books, and is well known in the fields of both mysteries and science fiction. She’s married to one of the leading science fiction critics, anthologists, and writers, Damon Knight.

   Teddy Wendover is a grown man in body, but because of an accident 20 years ago an eight-year old in mind. Everyone agrees that he’s a lovable man-child, but the police suspect that he’s a killer. The Oregon senator who led the field trip where Teddy’s accident occurred has been murdered-with a rock very similar to the ones that Teddy plays with and collects.

   Lawyer Barbara Holloway is uneasy with mentally challenged people, and wants no part of the case, but her father and partner takes it. It is, of course, more complex than it seems, and before it’s over, Barbara is in the courtroom fight of her life and struggling with an unwanted romance.

   Wilhelm is one of the few writers doing lawyer books that are also courtroom dramas, and are not Big Lawyer silliness à la Grisham. I liked the first two in the series, Death Qualified and Best Defense, and I liked this one. Holloway and her father are both likable and realistic characters, drawn in enough depth to engage the reader without the plethora of detail that sometimes overwhelms today’s crime fiction.

   The courtroom scenes are realistic and pertinent, and Holloway’s opponent is for once not portrayed as an evil and ambitious villain. This isn’t a sensational book and hence won’t garner the sales of inferior but more lurid brethren, but it is a very readable and enjoyable one.

   Try Wilhelm — you’ll like her.