Under Fire

At the outset of McLean's clich%C3%A9-ridden debut, a legal thriller, Boston firefighter Jack Fogerty gets fatally shot in the stomach while rescuing the owner of the Senegalese Market, Amina Diallo, and Amina's 15-year-old son from a blaze that destroys the store. The authorities quickly charge Amina, who, behind in her mortgage payments, appears to have torched her own property for the insurance, then shot Fogerty, the first firefighter on the scene, to cover her act of arson. Buddy Clancy, a notorious criminal defense attorney, persuades his ex-prosecutor niece, Sarah Lynch, who's still haunted by the shooting death of her lover four years earlier, to return to the courtroom to defend Diallo. The high-profile case, in which the governor of Massachusetts takes an active interest, pits Sarah, a former Olympic silver medalist hockey player, against her former colleagues. Numerous improbabilities burden the trial scenes, and the author telegraphs the unlikely truth behind the fire early on. (June)