Legal Fiction Thrillers

Rumpole is on the job again, bringing along his taste for claret, his penchant for poetry, and his reputation for a good story. These seven irresistible stories run the gamut from simple thievery to murder and espionage.

In 1970, one of Mississippi's more colorful weekly newspapers, The Ford County Times, went bankrupt. To the surprise and dismay of many, ownership was assumed by a 23 year-old college dropout, named Willie Traynor. The future of the paper looked grim until a young mother was brutally raped and murdered by a member of the notorious Padgitt family. Willie Traynor reported all the gruesome details, and his newspaper began to prosper.

Four years ago, LAPD detective Harry Bosch was on a movie set, asking questions about the murder of a young production assistant, when an armored car arrived with $2 million cash for use in a heist scene. In a life-imitates-art firestorm, a gang of masked men converged on the delivery and robbed the armored car with guns blazing. The crime was never resolved, and the young woman's murder was in the stack of unsolved-case files Bosch carried home the night he left the LAPD.

In Los Angeles in 1988, a 16-year-old girl disappeared from her home and was later found dead of a gunshot wound to the chest. The death appeared at first to be a suicide, but some of the evidence contradicted that scenario, and detectives came to believe this was in fact a murder. Despite a by-the-book investigation, no one was ever charged.

On New Year's Day, Detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch fields a call that a dog has found a bone - a bone that the dog's owner, a doctor, feels certain is human.

Newly licensed attorney Aspen Wilde joins Denver’s largest law firm to discover that an attractive, up-and-coming associate mysteriously vanished several months earlier and is presumed dead. She secretly embarks upon a brilliant but dangerous plan to trap the killer, only to find herself increasingly intertwined in a complex web of murders involving several different women killed in very different ways.

For a young lawyer on the make, it was an offer Mitch McDeere couldn’t refuse: a position at a law firm where the bucks, billable hours, and benefits are over the top. It’s a dream job for an up-and-comer—if he can overlook the uneasy feeling he gets at the office. Then an FBI investigation into the firm’s connections to the Mafia plunges the straight and narrow attorney into a nightmare of terror and intrigue. With no choice but to pit his wits, ethics, and legal skills against the firm’s deadly secrets—if he hopes to stay alive…

In the small Florida town of Seabrook, a young lawyer named Keith Russo was shot dead at his desk as he worked late one night. The killer left no clues. There were no witnesses, no one with a motive. But the police soon came to suspect Quincy Miller, a young Black man who was once a client of Russo’s.

Jack Dana is a former marine infantry officer and Force Recon platoon leader. He is also the author of three successful books. It may seem odd that someone like Jack - honor graduate of the corps' toughest combat schools - should become a novelist. But there's the other side of Jack: the Yale graduate, the only child of a Harvard philosophy professor father and a flutist mother who played with a Boston-based chamber orchestra. As Jack would say, "The truth is that to everything there is a season."

Michael Brock is billing the hours, making the money, rushing relentlessly to the top of Drake & Sweeney, a giant DC law firm. One step away from partnership, Michael has it all. Then, in an instant, it all comes undone. A homeless man takes nine lawyers hostage in the firm's plush offices. When it is all over, the man's blood is splattered on Michael's face - and suddenly Michael is willing to do the unthinkable. Rediscovering a conscience he lost long ago, Michael is leaving the big time for the streets where his attacker once lived.

Attorney Nate Shepherd’s newest client stands accused of a fatal hit and run. While Nate doesn’t believe that the CEO of Carrefour’s largest charity would ever smash into a person and flee the scene, a blood-streaked van says otherwise. A freewheeling prosecutor is certain that Nate’s client did it, and more, that the killing wasn’t an accident at all. With help from old friends and an intriguing new one, Nate uncovers incriminating acts, secret relationships, and a massive motive that has him scrambling for answers.

In a crowded courtroom in Mississippi, a jury returns a shocking verdict against a chemical company accused of dumping toxic waste into a small town's water supply, causing the worst "cancer cluster" in history. The company appeals to the Mississippi Supreme Court, whose nine justices will one day either approve the verdict or reverse it.

The life of a 10-year-old black girl is shattered by two drunken and remorseless young men. The mostly white town reacts with shock and horror at the inhuman crime, until her father acquires an assault rifle and takes justice into his own outraged hands.

Elliot Rosenzweig, a respected civic leader and philanthropist, is attending a fundraiser when he is suddenly accosted and accused of being a former Nazi SS officer named Otto Piatek, the Butcher of Zamosc. Although the charges are denounced as preposterous, his accuser is convinced he is right and engages attorney Catherine Lockhart to bring Rosenzweig to justice.

Driven by his tragic past, prosecutor Chance Meridian seeks justice for a beautiful woman brutally murdered in her own home. Except nothing comes easy in Atlanta, and certainly not justice. A lot of people in town wanted Sara Barton dead, and every single one of them is lying about something. Chance shouldn't be surprised. Murder is an ugly business. But so is love.

The last person family lawyer Sandy Moss expects to walk into her courtroom, right in the middle of a trial, is TV star Patrick McNabb: prime suspect in her first (and she hopes, last) murder case. Sandy knows what Patrick’s like. Friendly, overconfident, dazzlingly handsome...and a well-meaning menace. But his request seems harmless enough. His dear friend Cynthia is getting divorced, and he thinks Sandy’s perfect for the job. She accepts—because he’s Patrick and there is no denying him. But of course it’s not that simple.

Corporate lawyer Elizabeth Carlyle is under a lot of pressure. Her prestigious New York law firm is working on the most high-stakes case in company history defending a prominent bank. When Elizabeth gets the news that one of her junior associates has lost his phone - and the secret documents that were on it - she needs help. Badly. Enter ex-CIA officer Valencia Walker, a high-priced fixer who gets called in when governments, corporations, and plutocrats need their problems solved discretely. But things get complicated when the missing phone is retrieved....

Prem Bedi is the “Mogul”—the third-richest man in the country. He commands both fear and respect, and at fifty-three, he still looks handsome and aristocratic. But Bedi’s smoothly run empire comes to a screeching halt when he’s accused of killing his ex-wife and her husband, and dragged into a court battle. The ever-present spotlight on him grows brighter and harsher, and the questions grow louder—“Did he do it?” A story unfolding through several different perspectives, The Mogul is a howdunit set in the fractured world of power, money, and crime.

The sequel to the genre-defining, landmark best seller Presumed Innocent, Innocent continues the story of Rusty Sabich and Tommy Molto who are, once again, 20 years later, pitted against each other in a riveting psychological match after the mysterious death of Rusty's wife.

Tough-as-nails criminal defense attorney Jane Smith is hip-deep in the murder trial of the century. Actually, her charmless client might’ve committed several murders. She’s also fallen in love with a wonderful guy. And an equally wonderful dog, a mutt. But Jane doesn’t have much time. She’s just received a terminal diagnosis giving her twelve months. Unless she’s murdered before her expiration date.