Attorney Whitney Logan joins forces with streetwise Lupe Ramos, her cohort in Dogtown, as they try to reunite Lupe with her son and end up battling a killer in L.A.'s Koreatown. 15,000 first printing. $12,500 ad/promo. When attorney Whitney Logan chauffeurs her sometime friend Lupe (see Dogtown, Penguin, 1992) to a Korean woman's house to pick up Lupe's child, they interrupt a crime-in-progress: a masked man shoots an old woman and steals her private lottery fund. Whitney and Lupe investigate the victimized woman and run afoul of organized crime. Though hurting financially, young Whitney dresses for success, uses careful make-up, and works out with weights?all of which aids her investigation in one way or another. In-your-face language, humor, and a jaunty heroine should make this a popular choice. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. How's this for a slam-bang opening? Hard-bodied L.A. lawyer Whitney Logan, still feeling bad because prostitute Lupe Ramos had to shoot the bad guys herself in their first case together (Dogtown, 1991), waits outside the prison gate for Lupe's latest prison term to be up, then drives her to Koreatown to retrieve her son Joey from Kim John Oh, the new girlfriend Lupe's ex- welterweight brother, of high moral tone and empty brainpan, has parked him with. By the time they find Joey at the house of Kim's godmother Dorothy, though, he's being held by a masked man who's holding a gun on Dorothy and Kim's ``Auntie'' Jin Oh. Once again, Whitney can't pull the trigger in time, and the intruder kills Auntie Jin and makes off with a $75,000 stake from the widows' club that financed Kim's restaurant. Dorothy wants to hire Whitney to catch the murderous thief; Lupe wants her slice of the pie; so who is Whitney to beg off with the plea that she's only an attorney? The search for the loot will take her deep into Kim's unhappy past, and even deeper into the fleshpots of modern Koreatown--both sketched out with lightning strokes that will make you forgive the casually excessive, anything-for-a-felony plotting. Forget the killer; forget Whitney's obsession with her own shoes and parfums; and fasten your seat belt for a breathtaking tour of Soultown at its most exhilaratingly lurid. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Used Book in Good Condition