JULIE SMITH – Tourist Trap. Rebecca Schwartz #3. Mysterious Press, hardcover, 1986; paperback, August 1987. Fawcett, paperback, 1992.

   Rebecca Schwartz is an outspoken Jewish feminist lawyer who lives in San Francisco, and I wish I liked the mysteries she gets involved in more than I do. In this one, a madman disrupts the local tourist trade by committing a series of more or less random killings.

   And in the process frames Rebecca’s latest client for the deeds. Totally incompetent police work keeps the case open, even after the real culprit has been identified, halfway through the book. From that point on, there is little more to the story but wheel spinning.

      The Rebecca Schwartz series —

1. Death Turns a Trick (1982)
2. The Sourdough Wars (1984)
3. Tourist Trap (1986)
4. Dead in the Water (1991)
5. Other People’s Skeletons (1993)
Blood types (2014)
Cul-de-Sac (2014)