Legal Suspense Thrillers

Attorney Ken McClain has nothing to live for. Nine years after the accident that claimed the life of his wife and two sons, he's finally given up. Alone in his empty house, it seems suicide is his only escape. Now the question of death by pills or by bullet? Then suddenly the phone rings, and it turns out to be a case he can't refuse. A case for the life of accused killer Peter Thomason, and a case for his own soul.

No one worries much about the scantily clad woman found strangled in the Orchid Motel, she must be a tourist who brought along her own problems. But when the victim turns out to be the wife of an up-and-coming lawyer, people begin looking suspiciously among themselves for the culprit, and Judge Deborah Knott learns her cousin possesses a mighty powerful motive. While Deborah searches for the vicious killer, a deadly hurricane rages up the Carolina coast, bringing destruction and its own kind of justice.

DCI Hanlon is going undercover. Oxford philosophy lecturer Dr Gideon Fuller is in the frame, but Hanlon is not convinced. From the specialist brothels in Oxford and Soho, to the inner sanctum of a Russian people trafficker with a taste for hurting women, the trail leads Hanlon deeper and deeper into danger - until she herself becomes the killer's next target.... Can Hanlon track down the killer before it's too late?

Law student Rachel North will tell you, without hesitation, what she knows to be true. She's smart, she’s a hard worker, she does the right thing, she’s successfully married to a faithful and devoted husband, a lion of Boston's defense bar, and her internship with the Boston DA's office is her ticket to a successful future. Problem is she’s wrong. And in this cat-and-mouse game - the battle for justice becomes a battle for survival.

In the Company of Liars is that rare animal - a truly original thriller, strikingly fresh and unpredictable. Told chronologically in reverse, from its enigmatic end to its brilliant beginning, it's centered around a woman on trial for murder - Allison Pagone, who is caught between competing forces, each represented by someone who may not care if the pressure kills her in the end.

Attorney Scott Ellis is defending Lester Garrison, a 16-year-old accused of opening fire one Sunday afternoon on a gathering of high-school students. While fighting for Lester's freedom, Scott volunteers at Catawba High School and stumbles onto a tangible evil that is fueling a rage-filled hate to its breaking point.

Wealthy businessman Hartley Bassett has killed himself. There's a typewritten suicide note and three guns lying near his body. But for Perry Mason, that's evidence overkill. He knows there has been trouble in Bassett's life. His wife wants out, his stepson hates him, an embezzler can't pay him back - and there's the man with a glass eye who hired Perry Mason even before his glass eye went missing and was found in the hands of the deceased.

The McCarrans and the Gallaghers, two military families, have been close for decades, ever since Anthony McCarran—now one of the army's most distinguished generals—became best friends with Jack Gallagher, a fellow West Pointer who was later killed in Vietnam. Now a new generation of soldiers faces combat, and Lt. Brian McCarran, the general's son, has returned from a harrowing tour in Iraq. Traumatized by wartime experiences he will not reveal, Brian depends on his lifelong friendship with Kate Gallagher, Jack's daughter, who is married to Brian's commanding officer in Iraq.

An old house, a new lover, a fresh life for Dominick - or will the faith-driven doom it all? The past just won't go away. Dominick likes to idle there in history's comfortable remove, but when his mother dies and he meets the half sister he never knew he had, the past becomes more personal - and the present more dangerous. Dominick's perpetual peregrinations are interrupted by a visit to his newfound sibling's historic Hudson Valley estate, which is also home to a Wiccan coven.

President Kerry Kilcannon and his fiancée, television journalist Lara Costello, have at last decided to marry. But their wedding is followed by a massacre of innocents in a lethal burst of gunfire, challenging their marriage and his presidency in ways so shattering and indelibly personal that Kilcannon vows to eradicate gun violence and crush the most powerful lobby in Washington–the Sons of the Second Amendment (SSA).

Anne Murphy is smart, gorgeous, and young, the red-headed rookie at the Philadelphia law firm of Rosato & Associates. She leaves town for Fourth of July weekend to prepare for a high-profile trial, but when she buys her morning newspaper, her own photo is plastered all over the front page. And the headline, "Lawyer Murdered", supposedly refers to her. Anne sets out to find her killer, playing dead in order to stay alive.

From Martin Clark - praised by Entertainment Weekly as "our best legal-thriller writer" - comes a wickedly clever, tenderhearted, and intricately plotted novel about a hard-luck lawyer's refusal to concede defeat, even as fate, the court system, and a gang of untouchable con artists conspire against him.

When the head of San Francisco's largest HMO dies in his own hospital, no one doubts that it is anything but the result of massive injuries inflicted by a random hit-and-run accident. But the autopsy soon tells a different story - an overdose of potassium killed him, and the attending physician, Eric Kensing, becomes the prime suspect in a high-profile homicide.

The place: central Florida. The situation: a sensational murder trial, set in a courthouse more Soviet than Le Corbusier; a rich, white teenage girl - a twin - on trial for murdering her toddler brother. Two of the jurors: Hannah, a married 52-year-old former Rolling Stone and Interview Magazine photographer of rock stars and socialites, and Graham, a 41-year-old anatomy professor. Both are sequestered along with the other jurors at the Econo Lodge off I-75. Hannah and Graham fall into a furtive affair, keeping their oath as jurors never to discuss the trial.

Lawyer Judy Carrier takes the case of an elderly pigeon racer, Tony Lucia, who has been arrested for the murder of his lifelong enemy, Angelo Coluzzi. "Pigeon Tony", as he's known, confesses to Judy that he killed Coluzzi because of a vendetta begun more than 50 years ago.

Criminal lawyer Marta Richter is hours away from winning an acquittal for her client, millionaire businessman Elliot Steere, on trial for the murder of a homeless man who tried to carjack him. But as the jury begins deliberations, Marta discovers the chilling truth about her client's innocence. Taking justice into her own hands, she furiously sets out to prove the truth, with the help of two young associates.

Ethan "Hutch" Hutchinson hasn't seen his old college pals in nearly 10 years. Now fate has brought them together again as one of the gang is put on trial for a brutal, senseless murder. The Chicago police and prosecutor think they have their perp, but Hutch isn't about to sit silently in a courtroom as someone he cares about is wrongfully convicted.

When Hutch and his friends join forces to search for the real killer, what they find shatters every notion they have about friendship, loss, and redemption....

When a young reporter is found dead and a prominent Philadelphia businessman is accused of her murder, Mick McFarland finds himself involved in the case of his life. The defendant, David Hanson, is Mick's best friend, and the victim, a TV news reporter, had reached out to Mick for legal help only hours before her death. Mick's played both sides of Philadelphia's courtrooms. As a top-shelf defense attorney and former prosecutor, he knows all the tricks of the trade. And he'll need every one of them to win.

Samantha Brinkman, an ambitious, hard-charging Los Angeles criminal defense attorney, is struggling to make a name for herself and to drag her fledgling practice into the big leagues. Sam lands a high-profile double-murder case in which one of the victims is a beloved TV star - and the defendant is a decorated veteran LAPD detective. It promises to be exactly the kind of media sensation that would establish her as a heavy hitter in the world of criminal law.

Has Rumpole hung up his wig for good? Can it be? Yes, the beloved barrister is now retired (though far from retiring) and gently ripening to a rosy hue in the Florida sunshine. But a colleague's casual request for advice on a difficult case sends him winging back across the Atlantic, and before he's through, our hero will come up against a fanatical religious cult and a mysterious letter written in blood.