Lilly Cleary

Series · 4 books · 2004-2007

By Claire Matturro

Books in series

Skinny-dipping

2004

Representing wealthy doctors in malpractice cases, Sarasota attorney Lilly is attacked in her office after a kayak whiplash case, a situation that prompts her to employ an unorthodox method for finding out who is trying to get her.

Wildcat Wine

2005

Florida attorney Lillian Belle Cleary talks tough, loves tofu, fears toxins, and obsessively hates a mess. Having to deal with a psychic client and a Nazi neighbor is bad enough. Now she's got two dead bodies cluttering up her life—one mired in the Sarasota swamplands, and another mauled by a vineyard harvesting machine. But it's the not-so-shocking murder of one of her firm's most hated partners that really gets her pro-active. The cops think she's hiding something—or worse—so Lilly figures it's up to her to find the root that connects a trio of corpses, and to pick a murderer out of a healthy crop of wacko suspects. But her investigative endeavors may end up bearing very bitter fruit indeed, now that a deadly human predator is moving in for the kill.

Bone Valley

2006

In her never-ending quest to log more billable hours, Sarasota lawyer Lilly Cleary agrees to defend Angus and Miguel, two fervent environmentalists who are being sued for libeling . . . an orange! In the Sunshine State, people take their citrus seriously—and there are powerful interests that refuse to sit idly by while a pair of whistle-blowing rabble rousers demean Florida's main cash crop. Though the orange affair isn't quite the juicy case Lilly was looking for, it gets a lot stickier when one of the defendants is blown to bits right in front of her. Not one to take losing a case—or a client—lightly, whole-grain-loving, toxin-phobic Lilly will stop at nothing to get to the truth behind this and assorted other related murders. Which won't be easy, since everyone is lying—including the surviving environmentalist, who just happens to have an advanced degree from the University of the Streets . . . in bomb-making.

Sweetheart Deal

2007

Sarasota lawyer Lilly Cleary has had her share of odd cases. She's defended everyone from a pet psychic to an orange libeler, and she's done so with finesse. But it's another situation entirely when she finds out that her phobic and dysfunctional mother has been accused of murder. Although she's been estranged from her family for years, Lilly drops everything to return to the little town of Bugfest, Georgia, and steps into more than she bargained for. For one thing, her mother's house is beyond a mess. Important papers are missing, and on the back porch there's a freezer whose contents are very odd. Bugfest itself is under attack by developers who want to turn it into a resort community, a plan that would displace many of the longtime residents. And then someone tries to murder Lilly's mother with red ants while she's strangely oversedated in the hospital. Lilly has come to the rescue, but can she get to the root of these mysterious doings in time to save her mother's life?

Author

Claire Matturro

Author · 7 books

Claire Hamner Matturro, a former lawyer and college teacher, is the author of four legal mysteries with a sense of humor. Her books are: Skinny-Dipping (2004) (a BookSense pick, Romantic Times’Best First Mystery, and nominated for a Barry Award); Wildcat Wine (2005) (nominated for a Georgia Writer of the Year Award); Bone Valley(2006) and Sweetheart Deal (2007) (winner of Romantic Times’ Toby Bromberg Award for Most Humorous Mystery), all published by William Morrow. After her romantic suspense legal thriller, Trouble in Tallahassee (KaliOka Press 2017), Claire turned more serious with her newer book, The Smuggler's Daughter (Red Adept Publishing July 2020) and she returns to the Gulf Coast of Florida that she knows so well in a gripping mystery. And look for her newest book Wayward Girls, her joint-writing adventure with Penny Koepsel, which was released in August of this year. Claire remains active in writers’ groups, teaches creative writing in adult education, and write reviews for Southern Literary Review. Visit her at www.clairematturro.com