Legal Suspense Thrillers

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 1966 in Pulaski, Tennessee, Bocephus Haynes watched in horror as his father was brutally murdered by 10 local members of the Ku Klux Klan. As an African American lawyer practicing in the birthplace of the Klan years later, Bo has spent his life pursuing justice in his father's name. But when Andy Walton, the man believed to have led the lynch mob 45 years earlier, ends up murdered in the same spot as Bo's father, Bo becomes the prime suspect.

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.

Charlie Webb is a third rate lawyer who graduated from a third rate law-school and, because he couldn’t get hired by any of the major law firms, has opened his own law firm, where he gets by handling cases for dubious associates from his youth and some court appointed cases. Described as “a leaky boat floating down the stream of life,” Charlie has led unremarkable life, personally and professionally. Until he’s appointed to be the attorney for a decidedly crackpot artist who calls himself Guido Sabatini (born Lawrence Weiss).

Grace McCreary swears she tried to stop her sister-in-law from jumping from her penthouse balcony, but the police have a different take on the situation. They arrest Grace for murder, which puts her brother, Senatorial candidate Matthew McCreary, in a spotlight he doesn't relish. Grace seeks out his former lover, Josie Baylor-Bates, to act as her defense attorney. Josie, who has sworn off rich clients, agrees to defend Grace, but even she isn't sure why. She swears she believes in the woman's innocence, but in her heart, she wants to prove Matthew made a mistake letting her go.

When Marshall McEwan left his hometown at age 18, he vowed never to return. The trauma that drove him away ultimately spurred him to become one of the most successful journalists in Washington DC. But just as the political chaos in the nation’s capital lifts him to new heights, Marshall is forced to return home in spite of his boyhood vow. His father is dying, his mother is struggling to keep the family newspaper from failing, and the town is in the midst of an economic rebirth that might be built upon crimes that reach into the state capitol - and perhaps even to Washington.

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.

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.

Abby Endicott is chief of the district attorney's homicide unit in Boston, where she investigates and prosecutes the city's most dangerous killers. She attended the elite Winsor school, graduated from Harvard Law School, and has been known to change into an evening gown amid bodies in the morgue. She loves her job and is committed to it. But among Abby's many secrets is her longtime affair with fellow prosecutor Tim Mooney, a married father of one.

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.

She's old-money Miami. He's barefoot Coconut Grove. The only thing they had in common was the law, until they faced each other in the steamiest murder trial of the century, a case that would make sparks fly, headlines scream, and opposites attract. Surrounded by crooks, con men, and a cast of colorful characters, Steve Solomon and Vickie Lord must solve the crime before they end up in ruin, in jail, or, worse, in bed.

For the members of SEAL Team Six, it was a rare mission ordered by the president, monitored in real time from the Situation Room. Houthi rebels in Yemen had captured an American journalist and a member of the Saudi royal family. Their executions were scheduled for Easter Sunday. The SEAL team were to break them out. But when the mission results in spectacular failure, the finger-pointing goes all the way to the top. Paige Chambers, a determined young lawyer, has a very personal reason for wanting to know the answer.

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.

Nate O'Riley is a high-octane Washington litigator who's lived too hard, too fast, for too long. His second marriage in a shambles, and he is emerging from his fourth stay in rehab armed with little more than his fragile sobriety, good intentions, and resilient sense of humor. Returning to the real world is always difficult, but this time it's going to be murder.

Psychiatrist Dr. Gwen Moore is an expert on killers. She’s spent a decade treating California’s most depraved predators and unlocking their motives - predators much like the notorious Bloody Heart serial killer, whose latest teenage victim escaped and then identified local high school teacher Randall Thompson as his captor. The case against Thompson as the Bloody Heart Killer is damning - and closed, as far as Gwen and the media are concerned. If not for one new development.

The incomparable master of the legal thriller takes us deeper into the labyrinth that is the American justice system, always drawing us in with an irresistible hook, pulling the thread of tension tighter and tighter, and then knocking us out with a conclusion that's never "by the book". Maybe that's why, after more than 20 years of consecutive number-one New York Times best sellers, a new novel by America's favorite storyteller is still a major publishing event.

Last seen in 1997's Flesh & Bones, Jake Lassiter is a hero unlike any other in the courtroom. Booklist called him "one of the most entertaining series characters in contemporary crime fiction." The former Miami Dolphin is still swimming with sharks in his latest, boldest novel of suspense yet. Amy Larkin is in town, looking for her sister Krista, who vanished without a trace almost two decades earlier. She seeks out Lassiter because he's the last person to have seen her alive.

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.

Hollywood actor Robert Soloman stands accused of stabbing his wife and her lover, but he is pleading that he had nothing to do with it. This is the trial of the century, and the defence want Eddie Flynn on their team. The biggest case Eddie has ever tried before, he decides to take it on despite the overwhelming evidence that Robert is guilty. As the trial starts, Eddie becomes sure of Robert's innocence, but there's something else he is even more sure of - that there is something sinister going on in the jury box.

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.