Legal Fiction Thrillers

In the sixth volume of the best-selling Joe Dillard series, Dillard does something he has never done before - he hires a young associate. Her name is Charleston Story, she is bright and beautiful, and in her very first case, she winds up inheriting an item so valuable that it threatens to destroy her and everything she cares about. As Dillard tries to help and advise his young protégé, he finds himself dragged into a web of danger and intrigue, a web so thick that he may never be able to extract himself.

A dead man in the kitchen, gas fumes permeate the house, a duck seems to be drowning in the fishbowl, but it didn't die. Maybe that fact has something to do with murder? John L. Witherspoon, a wealthy patrician, is loath to let his daughter marry Marvin Adams, the son of a convicted murderer, something Marvin's mother managed to keep a secret - until now. To set the love-struck lass straight, Witherspoon engages Perry Mason to weigh the 20-year-old evidence that sent Marvin's father to the gallows, and prove that the young man is kin to the murdering kind.

Aspiring actress Stephane Olger just wants to be in pictures. But she may end up in mug shots instead when she gets herself caught up in a crime. Shortly after quitting her job and moving to Hollywood, she is picked up by a well-dressed man while hitchhiking. The man loses control of the car and they end up in a horrible accident. Both Stephane and the driver escape unscathed but the strange man flees the scene leaving Stephane to face a charge of manslaughter.

Attorney Laurel Chandler did not come back to Bayou Breaux to seek justice. That once-burning obsession had destroyed her credibility, her career, her marriage - and nearly her sanity. But when a ruthless predator strikes too close to home, she's lured into a perverse game from which there may be no escape. Once before, Laurel's cries against a monstrous evil went unanswered. Who will listen now?

It's the day before Mike Frame's 50th birthday and his quiet provincial life is suddenly falling apart. But perhaps it doesn't matter, because it's not his life in the first place. He has a past that his partner Miranda and step-daughter Sam know nothing about, lived under another name amidst the turbulence of the revolutionary armed struggle of the 1970s. Now Mike is seeing ghosts: a dead ex-lover and an old friend who wants to reminisce.

Katherine Kelly's mentor says she has the makings of a good reporter, but to be great she must learn to find the emotional core of a story and not hold back in its telling. Then he suggests one last graduate-school assignment: Find someone who has influenced her family, and tell that story. Katherine decides to pursue the only family story that has eluded her all her life: the identity of the father she never knew.

Yoshi Lomax loves playing dirty. She'll do whatever it takes to win a case - including bribing cops, sleeping with her superiors, and convincing her DEA pals to make evidence disappear. But when Yoshi runs out of tricks while defending a Haitian mob boss, the gangster makes one thing clear: Yoshi either wins the case or loses her life.

Personal injury attorney Peter Game has a reputation: cynical, untroubled by ethics, and willing to take any case, anytime, in his pursuit of the win. He dreams of a sweetheart score that’ll make his name and net him millions. Then comes the lightning rod: a school shooting just outside of Salt Lake City. His client: the devastated mother of one of the victims. What she wants is understandable—just not simple: to sue the manufacturers of the automatic weapon used in the mass killing.

For many years Zeke Caldwell has been concocting home remedies made from natural ingredients found in the coastal marshes near Wilmington, North Carolina. One of his remedies proved so effective that he patented it with the help of David’s father. Now he suspects a big drug company has stolen his formula. What he doesn’t know is that the theft has deeper, more evil roots. When Zeke asks David to help fight the drug company, David knows the suit is beyond his expertise and experience.

Widower Jack Harris has resisted the dating scene ever since the shooting of his wife Molly by a fifteen-year-old boy three years ago. An early morning run along the Hudson River changes that when he spots a woman in last night’s party dress, barefoot, enjoying a champagne picnic alone, reading his favorite novel. Everything about her reminds him of what he used to have with Molly. Eager to help Jack find love again, his best friend posts a message on a popular website after he mentions the encounter.

Five US soldiers, tasked with guarding Iraqi prisoners, stand accused of committing depraved atrocities against their charges. Drummond is assigned to defend one of them: a hardscrabble young woman who is either incredibly naive or deceptively evil...and whose incriminating photos made the case an international scandal.

It’s 1933, and Ivor Castle, Oxford-educated and Jewish, arrives in Palestine to take up a position as assistant to the defense counsel in the trial of the two men accused of murdering Haim Arlosoroff, a leader of the Jewish community in Palestine whose efforts to get Jews out of Hitler’s Germany and into Palestine may have been controversial enough to get him killed.

At the rooftop bar of the famed Watergate Hotel in Washington, DC, a former vice president is assassinated. Across the Potomac River, a mysterious sniper leaves a .50 caliber rifle on the bed of his hotel room, then disappears. Crime reporter Jane Cole and NYPD cop Robert Warren have clues no one else has. But as they arrive in DC to investigate, they're hit with a series of cover-ups and misdirections. And as they close in on the killer, they realize that they, too, are being tracked.

The legal profession itself is put on the stand in this collection of courtroom mysteries by some of today's finest mystery writers. From an unusual lawyer with unusual methods, to a conniving attorney who gets the fate he so richly deserves, the halls of justice ring with these stories of intrigue and suspense.

In the rural parishes of Louisiana's French Triangle, young women are disappearing one by one, only to turn up on the banks of the bayou, strangled and cast aside where they are sure to be found. But there is one trophy the killer prizes above all others, one woman who must be silenced forever.... Attorney Laurel Chandler did not come back to Bayou Breaux to seek justice. That once-burning obsession had destroyed her credibility, her career, her marriage - and nearly her sanity. But when a ruthless predator strikes too close to home, she's lured into a perverse game from which there may be no escape.

In his new life as a bartender at the Little Shamrock, Dismas Hardy is just hoping for a little peace. He's left both the police force and his law career behind. Unfortunately it's not as easy to leave behind the memory of a shattering personal loss - but for the time being, he can always take the edge off with a stiff drink and a round of darts.

A young man with Down's syndrome has been convicted of burning down his care home and killing five people, but a fellow inmate at his secure psychiatric unit has hired Thora to prove Jakob is innocent. If he didn't do it, who did? And how is the multiple murder connected to the death of Magga, killed in a hit and run on her way to babysit?

Mrs Beatrice Dark, the wife of powerful cabinet minister, Joseph Dark, enters the office of a tabloid newspaper and shoots her husband’s enemy, the editor of the tabloid on the eve of World War Two. A sensational murder trial occurs, with its unfolding secrets, lies and sex scandals, mesmerising the nation, with those who believe she should be acquitted and those who think she should hang. But what is the real reason she killed Steven Hood, the editor?

Hours after rejecting the Corrowa People’s native title claim on Brisbane’s Meston Park, Justice Bruce Brosnan is brutally murdered in his home. Days later, lawyers against the claim are also found dead. Aboriginal people were once prohibited from entering Brisbane’s city limits at night, and Meston Park stood on the boundary. The Corrowa’s matriarch, Ethel Cobb, is convinced the murders are the work of an ancient assassin who has returned to destroy the boundary, but Aboriginal lawyer Miranda Eversely isn't so sure.

Lester is a lawyer for a prestigious law firm in New York that represents some of New York City’s most wealthy citizens, including Hiram W. Holladay, a Wall Street tycoon. When Mr. Holladay is found dead at his desk from a knife wound to the neck, all evidence points to his daughter, Miss Frances Holladay, as the perpetrator. Courtroom drama, a kidnapping, and a fraught pursuit overseas follow this shocking crime in an ingenious detective story sure to delight mystery fans.