Legal Suspense Thrillers

They call themselves the Brethren: three disgraced former judges doing time in a Florida federal prison. One was sent up for tax evasion. Another, for skimming bingo profits. And the third, for a career-ending drunken joyride. Meeting daily in the prison law library, taking exercise walks in their boxer shorts, these judges-turned-felons can reminisce about old court cases, dispense a little jailhouse justice, and contemplate where their lives went wrong.

In the second installment of the Cadence Elliott Legal Thriller Series, a tech entrepreneur is murdered and Cadence steps in to defend the accused. Her client is a homeless man named Brandon Colter who can't seem to help but incriminate himself. The cops have him right where they want him, thanks to a signed confession. He tells Cadence he's innocent, but she doesn't know what to believe. But she refuses to let Brandon become fodder for a ruthless justice system. Throwing herself into the case, Cadence explores angles the police won't consider.

This is the story of 11-year-old Mark Sway, who witnessed the bizarre suicide of a New Orleans attorney. Just before he dies, the lawyer tells Mark a deadly secret. The police, the federal prosecutor, and the FBI pressure Mark to tell them the attorney's last words, but Mark knows that with the mob watching his every move, revealing his secret will almost surely get him killed.

Detective Tracy Crosswhite has a skill, and a soft spot, for tackling unsolved crimes. Having lost her own sister to murder at a young age, Tracy has dedicated her career to bringing justice and closure to the families and friends of victims of crime. So when Jenny, a former police academy classmate and protégé, asks Tracy to help solve a cold case that involves the suspicious suicide of a Native American high school girl forty years earlier, Tracy agrees.

In Florida, defense attorney Daniel Pike is stunned when his legal files are ransacked and his lover, Maria Morales, disappears. In Oklahoma, semi-retired attorney Ben Kincaid is horrified when his connection to this apparent abduction endangers the people he loves most. Desperate for help, Pike seizes Kincaid and hauls him on a cross-country road trip to discover what happened to Maria…and why a killer is so interested in a California murder case.

With some of the most spine-chilling scenes in modern suspense fiction, Bait guarantees the listener a roller coaster ride with a hero not afraid to cross the line. Life for narcotics detective Jack Walsh is one continuous drunken binge - until one blurry night when his car veers into an oncoming car, killing the son of Boston’s premier crime boss. Now Jack must decide if he wants to hide from D’Angelo’s vengeful compatriots or reclaim his life.

The Zoo Crew. A random assortment of individuals that came together in western Montana out of circumstance, stayed together by choice. Among them are Ajax, a gaming genius far from his native Boston. Kade, a forest firefighter that spends half his year roaming the blazing countryside, the other half perusing the local nightlife. Sage, registered nurse and proverbial mother hen for the group.

The irrepressible, audacious defence barrister Horace Rumpole whose court scenes are proverbial, and whose home is ruled by Mrs Rumpole, is back in these short stories by John Mortimer. The much loved stories were adapted from his scripts for the hugely popular TV series of the same name.

Kenzi Rivera is furious. Passed over for promotion at her own father’s firm, the talented divorce lawyer is tired of fighting chauvinism every single day. When a desperate scientist begs for help getting her daughter back, Kenzi can’t resist…even though this client is involved in Hexitel, a group she calls her religion but others call a cult. Kenzi uncovers evidence of disturbing practices at Hexitel involving large sums of money, servitude, and sex. She also learns her client’s lab has been plagued by death threats and cutthroat competition.

It's two in the morning when Hannah Sheraton slips into Archer's Hermosa Beach apartment to see if Josie Bates sleeps in his bed. But Josie isn't there. In fact, Josie isn't anywhere. When her Jeep is found abandoned in a parking lot near the Redondo pier, the only clue to her whereabouts leads Archer to Daniel Young, an expert witness for the prosecution in the case that made Josie's reputation as a defense attorney 10 years earlier. From the Hollywood Hills to the glitzy evangelical enclave of Orange County, Archer bores into the past.

Arthur Beauchamp takes a break from the courtroom to write a memoir so he can set the record straight about a headline murder case he fought as a young lawyer in 1966. The trial would either mark him as a pathetic loser or thrust him into the top ranks of criminal counsel. The background: in 1966, a young housemaid was raped by her employer, a callous and vindictive millionaire. She shot him point blank, so it seemed an open-and-shut case of first-degree murder. Enter Arthur Beauchamp, a young lawyer haunted by having bungled his only previous murder case.

Penn Cage is no stranger to death. As a Houston prosecutor he sent 16 men to death row, and watched seven of them die. But now, in the aftermath of his wife's death, the grief-stricken father packs up his four-year-old daughter, Annie, and returns to his hometown in search of healing. But peace is not what he finds there.

For as long as Lucia Gomez has been the police chief in the city of Highland Isle, near Kindle County, she has known that any woman in law enforcement must walk a precarious line between authority and camaraderie to gain respect. She has maintained a spotless reputation—until now. Three male police officers have accused her of soliciting sex in exchange for promotions to higher ranks. With few people left who she can trust, Chief Gomez turns to an old friend, Rik Dudek, to act as her attorney in the federal grand jury investigation.

Tony Colletti, a good suburban cop and father of a child with autism, finds himself drawn into the controversy over the apparent but rarely acknowledged connection between childhood vaccines and autism. His quest to uncover the truth forces him to risk all he holds dear while confronting corrupt government officials, the powerful pharmaceutical industry, and disturbing elements of his own past. Even while holding down his job and dealing with family crises, Colletti spearheads the drive to contend with industrial espionage, Russian gangsters, and sexual predators.

Tessa Ensler loves her job. She’s worked her way up to being a top criminal defense barrister against all the odds, and fights to defend those pleading not guilty. Tessa believes in the law, believes in the system. Her quick-witted cross-examinations and intelligence in the courtroom see her clocking up win after win—including securing freedom for men accused of rape and sexual assault. Innocence until proven guilty is, after all, the bedrock of a civilized society.

When Riley Schoenberg strides into family lawyer Sandy Moss’s office without knocking and coolly sits down, Sandy’s more irritated than amused. She has a client meeting to prepare for, and being interrupted by an eleven-year-old girl is not on her to-do list. But then Sandy hears Riley’s pitch, and it’s a killer one: Riley’s father’s been convicted of murdering her mother…and the oddly intimidating pre-teen will do anything to get him out of jail.

The murder of a woman from one of the town's oldest families has Rosedale's upper crust howling for blood, and the prosecutor is counting on Ruby's inexperience to help him deliver a swift conviction. Ruby's client is a college football star who has returned home after a career-ending injury, and she is determined to build a defense that will stick. She finds help in unexpected quarters from Suzanne, a hard-charging attorney armed to the teeth, and Shorty, a diner cook who knows more than he lets on.

Set in the era of the Nixon and Reagan presidencies, this novel examines the American conscience while inviting us into the glittering world of the East Coast legal community. Stephen L. Carter's book follows black Ivy League law professor Talcott Garland as he investigates the death of his father, Judge Oliver Garland, the eponymous "Emperor."

Something mysterious is killing the wildlife in the mountains just south of Tucson. When a college intern turned activist sets out to collect her own evidence, she, too, ends up dead. Local law enforcement is slow to get involved. That’s when the mobile FBI unit goes undercover to infiltrate the town and its copper refinery in search of possible leads.

Supreme Court clerk Avery Keene is back, trying to get her feet on solid ground after unraveling an international conspiracy in While Justice Sleeps. But as the sparks of Congressional hearings and political skirmishes swirl around her, Avery is approached at a legal conference by Preston Davies, an unassuming young man and fellow law clerk to a federal judge in Idaho.