Legal Suspense Thrillers

On the night he celebrates a big win, defense attorney Mickey Haller is pulled over by police, who find the body of a former client in the trunk of his Lincoln. Haller is immediately charged with murder but can’t post the exorbitant $5 million bail slapped on him by a vindictive judge. Mickey elects to represent himself and is forced to mount his defense from his jail cell in the Twin Towers Correctional Center in downtown Los Angeles.

Leo had been raised by his older brother, Teddy, a top criminal lawyer both renowned and notorious for his talent and ruthlessness. Though different in character and viewpoint, Leo always tried to emulate Teddy, striving to be recognized by his brother as a fellow lawyer in his own right. The two are at lunch when Teddy, supposed to give the closing argument of his current trial that afternoon, is shot - in public, in the middle of the bar. But the shooter escapes without Leo catching even a glimpse of him.

In his final hours in the Oval Office, the outgoing President grants a controversial last-minute pardon to Joel Backman, a notorious Washington power broker who has spent the last six years hidden away in a federal prison. What no one knows is that the President issues the pardon only after receiving enormous pressure from the CIA. It seems Backman, in his power broker heyday, may have obtained secrets that compromise the world’s most sophisticated satellite surveillance system.

As the Avenger of Blood systematically executes guilty rapists and the lawyers who finagled their freedom, a reporter has visions of this relentless vigilante in action. To her amazement, she soon finds herself in the slammer, accused of being the notorious serial killer. Deep in despair, she retains an attorney who specializes in the insanity plea.

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…

Clanton, Mississippi. 1990. Jake Brigance finds himself embroiled in a deeply divisive trial when the court appoints him attorney for Drew Gamble, a timid sixteen-year-old boy accused of murdering a local deputy. Many in Clanton want a swift trial and the death penalty, but Brigance digs in and discovers that there is more to the story than meets the eye. Jake’s fierce commitment to saving Drew from the gas chamber puts his career, his financial security, and the safety of his family on the line.

Given the importance of what they do, and the controversies that often surround them, and the violent people they sometimes confront, it is remarkable that in the history of this country only four active federal judges have been murdered. Judge Raymond Fawcett has just become number five.... Nothing is as it seems and everything’s fair game in this wickedly clever new novel from John Grisham, the undisputed master of the legal thriller.

In The Whistler, Lacy Stoltz investigated a corrupt judge who was taking millions in bribes from a crime syndicate. She put the criminals away, but only after being attacked and nearly killed. Three years later, and approaching forty, she is tired of her work for the Florida Board on Judicial Conduct and ready for a change.

Raised in Natchez, Mississippi, Penn Cage learned all he knows from his father, Dr. Tom Cage. But now Tom has been accused of murdering the Black nurse with whom he worked in the 1960s and Penn is determined to exonerate him. The quest for answers leads down a trail of corruption and brutality that places Penn’s family squarely in the crosshairs of the Double Eagles, a vicious offshoot of the KKK controlled by some of the state’s most powerful men. Penn ultimately must acknowledge that secrets from his father’s past have put the Cage family in great jeopardy.

A movie director is charged with murdering an actress during sex, and then staging her death to make it look like a suicide. In a seemingly unrelated case, a loner is murdered, leaving the sheriff's department with no clues. One unsettling revelation after another leaves a retired FBI agent and an L.A. detective thinking they've unmasked a most frightening killer with almost inconceivable calculation.

Leigh Collier has worked hard to build what looks like a normal life. She has a good job as a defense attorney, a daughter doing well in school, and even her divorce is relatively civilized - her life is just as unremarkable as she’d always hoped it would be. But Leigh’s ordinary life masks a childhood that was far from average...a childhood tarnished by secrets, broken by betrayal, and finally torn apart by a devastating act of violence.

A gripping, poignant, and masterful courtroom novel, The Best Defense is a major work from one of America's most popular writers.

Seattle, 1933. The city is in the grips of the Great Depression, Prohibition, and vice. Cutting his teeth on a small-time beat, hungry and ambitious young reporter William “Shoe” Shumacher gets a tip that could change his career. There’s been a murder at a social club on Profanity Hill—an underworld magnet for vice crimes only a privileged few can afford. The story is going to be front-page news, and Shoe is the first reporter on the scene.

It starts with the body of a Hollywood producer in the trunk of a Rolls-Royce, shot twice in the head at close range - what looks like "trunk music", a Mafia hit. But the LAPD's organized crime unit is curiously uninterested, and when Harry follows a trail of gambling debts to Las Vegas, the case suddenly becomes more complex - and much more personal.

Night club owner Rick Cowan approaches criminal defense attorney Tex Hunter and presents an offer Hunter can't refuse. But Rick Cowan isn't a regular client. He isn't faultless, he isn't friendly, and he isn't clean—his past is littered with violence, agony, and decades of fraudulent behavior. Cowan claims he's innocent of the felony drug charges and has been set up from the inside, but the evidence against him continues to mount.

In The Justice Game by Christy Award-winning author Randy Singer, a brutal murder triggers a gun-rights debate with wide-ranging consequences. When a man guns down a pregnant reporter on live TV, her husband sues the manufacturer of the killer's firearm. As opposing lawyers ignite the courtroom with their eloquence and theatrics, a shadowy cabal threatens the advocates and the justice they seek.

Stafford Lee Penney is a small-town lawyer with a big-time reputation for winning every case he tries. In his sharp suits and polished Oxford shoes, Penney is Biloxi, Mississippi’s #1 Lawyer and top local celebrity. Just as Penney notches his latest courtroom victory, his wife is scandalously killed. He spirals into a legal and personal losing streak, damaging his reputation and ruining his career. That’s when Penney makes a bold decision. He stops trading on his power-lawyer identity and creates a new one: lawyer lifeguard.

One week before Jake Rutledge is scheduled to graduate from law school, he receives the devastating news of the death of his fraternal twin, Blake. What makes this death even more terrible for Jake is that his brother died of a drug overdose. Until hearing of his death, Jake had no idea his brother was even using drugs. When Jake returns home to Oakley, West Virginia, he takes a hard look at the circumstances of his brother's death. In the five years Jake has been away for his schooling, his hometown has drastically changed.

Jack Tobin, a Florida trial lawyer, is dedicated to ending capital punishment one prisoner at a time. Jack is convinced that doomed convict Henry Wilson is innocent, but can he delay execution and get Henry a new trial in time?

Fifteen years after the events of the Natchez Burning trilogy, Penn Cage is alone. Nearly all his loved ones are dead, his old allies gone, and he carries a mortal secret that separates him from the world. But Penn’s exile comes to an end when a brawl at a Mississippi rap festival triggers a bloody mass shooting—one that nearly takes the life of his daughter Annie.