Bennie Rosato is a suit-wearing lawyer who lives by the straight
and narrow. As Bennie's identical twin sister, Alice Connolly looks
just like Bennie, but her moral compass is 180 degrees off
Bennie's. Alice delights in her own slutty wardrobe. She doesn't
care that she can't seem to hold a respectable job, although she
does well selling drugs for her boyfriend, Q. When Alice dallies
with one of Q's drug-runners, Jimmy, Q murders Jimmy.

Realizing that Q will kill her soon, Alice decides to become
Bennie. Her plan is rather complicated. She breaks into a
stranger's home and invites Bennie for dinner. When Bennie succumbs
to the Rohypnol-laced wine, Alice hauls her out into her car,
driving her to a distant location where she buries Bennie in a box.
(Alice doesn't kill Bennie because she is squeamish about seeing
her own face on a dead body.) Alice intends to become Bennie long
enough to appropriate Bennie's considerable financial assets. Once
she has millions in an offshore bank account, Alice will
vanish.

While Alice begins living in Bennie's tony three-story row
house, Bennie becomes conscious. She realizes that Alice has sealed
her in a wooden box and knows she is buried somewhere. Screaming
and hammering on the lid are useless and exhausting. In a lull
between frantic actions, she reflects on how she finally realized
she had a twin. She grew up the only child of a single mother who
had suffered from mental illness. When Bennie was summoned to
defend a woman charged with murder, she knew even before Alice
confirmed the fact that she and the defendant were identical twins.
Bennie successfully defended Alice in court while discovering that
her mother adopted out one of her twin infants. While Bennie tried
to compensate for being the chosen twin, Alice only sporadically
contacted her twin --- only to make trouble for Bennie every
time.

Now Bennie rouses and loses consciousness. She suffers
hallucinations in between her frantic attempts to somehow tunnel
through the top of the box. Her terror and hopelessness are
magnified as she fights against her dwindling oxygen stores, even
as she hears a growling animal clawing to get into her box and kill
her. Back in Bennie's home and at her law office, Alice is managing
to fool everyone, although it is sometimes a challenge. When
Bennie's ex shows up, Alice is certainly not above letting the
good-looking man assume she is Bennie.

Mary DiNunzio is a lawyer in Bennie's firm. A young widow, Mary
is unsettled by her latest relationship. She loves Anthony, her
fiancé, but wonders if it isn't too soon to try to love
another man. She is also concerned about her parents, especially
after Fiorella Bucatina, a lovely widow who is distantly related to
her family, comes to visit. Fiorella, who claims she can perform
magic spells, seems to be a little too interested in Mary's father.
While Mary's personal life is unsettled, she is pinning her
professional hopes on becoming a partner in Bennie's firm.

As always, Lisa Scottoline sets up an intriguing premise.
Identical twins are inherently fascinating --- and she makes the
ability for one twin to step into the life of the other (a tricky
maneuver, to say the very least!) feel logical, with Alice cleverly
side-stepping several seemingly insurmountable obstacles. Although
some plot points make it difficult for readers to suspend disbelief
and cast members don't always act in character, Scottoline's many
fans will keep turning pages late into the night, anxious to
discover how Bennie handles her deadly predicament and the
complications that follow.