Brotherly Love — Randye Lordon

Sibling rivalry and the suggestion that a PI's supposedly dead brother is still alive power a fast-paced, though not always convincing, first novel. While reading the newspaper, brassy Manhattanite Sydney Sloane learns of a jailbreak by convicted murderer Noah Alexander. The prisoner's mug shot surprises her, for "Noah" bears an amazing resemblance to her older brother David, thought to have been killed in Israel. Although Sydney considered David an unlovable jerk during his verifiable lifetime, she doesn't think him capable of murder and sets out to prove Noah/David's innocence. Her investigation becomes problematic when gun-toting goons also descend on the trail, someone kills Noah's girlfriend and Sydney falls for the 25-year-old daughter of a murder victim.