The first plot bombshell goes off when Goodman digs up a videotape of the bishop romping naked with four kids, including Aaron. With his trusty team of assistants-Naomi, the beautiful black paralegal the Judge, retired, who gives Vail bench-advice boxer-turned-law-student Tommy Goodman-Vail works furiously on a defense, checking Aaron's background by sending Goodman to the boy's Kentucky hometown (where Goodman sleeps with Aaron's high-school teacher and learns that she'd slept often with Aaron). The case against Aaron looks airtight, especially with Vail's nemesis, high-powered Jane Venable (``She was just like Vail-no prisoners'') prosecuting. Area powerbrokers take vengeance by sticking Vail with the pro bono defense of angelic- looking Aaron Stampler, 19, found holding a bloody knife near the room where Chicago's ``saint'' of a bishop has been sliced into chopped meat. Martin Vail is Chicago's hottest attorney, a prickly Wunderkind who's just won a $7.6 million lawsuit filed by a mobster against the county, city, and state.

Here, in his strongest yarn in years, Diehl jumps on the legal-thriller bandwagon, with a nod to psychothrillers as well. Though Diehl never breaks new thriller-ground, he generally does a fine job of hoeing others' rows-from the cop-novel Sharky's Machine (1978) through the mob novel Hooligans (1984) and the Nazi- conspiracy novel 27 (1990).

Primal Fear by William Diehl