Legal Suspense Thrillers

Meet Tony Valenti. His high-flying corporate law career just cratered. His society marriage blew up in a bitter divorce. He's returned to the Chicago suburbs to lick his wounds and regroup in the haven of the Valenti family home. But time to heal isn't in the cards. Tony's elderly father inexplicably shoots a sheriff's deputy on their front porch. Nobody knows why, and Papa isn't talking. Then their house becomes an unlikely target for condemnation and expropriation by corrupt local officials and their cronies.

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.

Back as head of the district attorney's homicide bureau, Butch Karp comes up against one of his most bizarre cases yet. A series of racially motivated murders in Harlem prove to be the work of a wealthys uburbanite out to relive a twisted episode from his childhood. The killer's showboating defense attorney will stop at nothing to derail Karp's prosecution - even if it means igniting a race war.

Legendary criminal defense attorney Sarah Knight has spent all of her 46 years hiding the unspeakable secrets of her past. Now, newly arrived in San Diego from New York, she is appointed to represent Alexa Reed, a former US Supreme Court clerk and the daughter-in-law of Supreme Court Justice Coleman Reed. Alexa is arrested for the murders of her ex-husband, attorney Michael Reed, and La Jolla psychologist Ronald Brigman. All the evidence points to Alexa. Coleman Reed wants Alexa sentenced to death without delay.

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.

An embezzling scandal breaks that rocks the community church to its core. The New Age groups are ready to declare victory when a high profile prosecutor files criminal charges against the local pastor. However, attorney Olivia Murray is not willing to give up on the community she's come to love. She takes on the defense pro bono knowing it could destroy her career, but it's a case that she is called to defend.

A cold-blooded kidnapper has been playing a twisted game with a terrified Minnesota town. Now a respected member of the community stands accused of a chilling act of evil. But when a second boy disappears, a frightened public demands to know: Have the police caught the wrong man? Is the nightmare continuing...or just beginning?

From the blockbuster bestselling author of the Eve Duncan novels comes a new, stand alone thriller about a woman with a photographic memory who has lived her life in the Witness Protection Program. What she once put her entire family in jeopardy and now, years later, her cover is blown. She’s on the run, and the lives of those she holds dear hang in the balance. As only Iris Johansen can do, you won’t see the twists coming.

On a quiet August morning, Judge Deborah Knott's father, Kezzie, makes a shocking discovery on a remote corner of his farm: the body of a man bludgeoned to death. Investigating this crime, Deborah's husband, Sheriff's Deputy Dwight Bryant, soon uncovers a long-simmering hostility between Kezzie and the slain man over a land dispute. The local newspaper implies that Deborah's family may have had something to do with the murder - and that Dwight is dragging his feet on the case.

Carpenter, the Paterson, N.J., lawyer whose wealth allows him to work as seldom as he chooses, is recovering from the loss of the love of his life, Laurie Collins, who has moved home to Findlay, Wis., to become the acting chief of police. When Laurie calls Andy for help after arresting 21-year-old Jeremy Davidson for murders that she thinks he didn't commit, Andy can't resist heading off to Findlay with his faithful dog, Tara.

No one mourned when San Francisco DA Wes Farrell put Paul Riley in prison eleven years ago for the rape and murder of his girlfriend. And no one is particularly happy to see him again when he’s released after The Exoneration Initiative uncovered evidence that pinned the crime on someone else. In fact, Riley soon turns up murdered, surrounded by the loot from his latest scam. But if Riley was really innocent all along, who wanted him dead?

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.

When it comes to swimming with the sharks, there is no bigger kahuna than Serge Storms. Bingeing on a marathon of legal movies set in Florida, Serge finds his vocation: the law. Never mind law school or that degree; Serge becomes a freelance fixer - wildcat paralegal and pilgrim to the hallowed places where legal classics of the big screen such as Body Heat, Cool Hand Luke, and Absence of Malice were filmed practically in his own backyard.

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.

Jack Dana is a former marine infantry officer and Force Recon platoon leader. He is also the author of three successful books. It may seem odd that someone like Jack - honor graduate of the corps' toughest combat schools - should become a novelist. But there's the other side of Jack: the Yale graduate, the only child of a Harvard philosophy professor father and a flutist mother who played with a Boston-based chamber orchestra. As Jack would say, "The truth is that to everything there is a season."

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.

Seeing a dog next to a homeless man inspires lawyer Andy Carpenter to give the pair some money to help. Soon after Andy’s encounter with them, man and dog are attacked in the middle of the night on the street. The dog defends its new owner, and the erstwhile attacker is bitten but escapes. But the dog is quarantined, and the man, Don Carrigan, is heartbroken. Andy’s wife, Laurie, can’t resist helping the duo. In a matter of days, Don and his dog, Zoey, are living above Andy’s garage and become two new additions to the family. But things soon go awry....

In The 13th Juror, Dismas Hardy, lawyer/investigator, undertakes the defense of Jennifer Witt, accused of murdering her husband and their eight-year-old son as well as her first husband, who had died nine years earlier from an apparent drug overdose. While preparing his case, Hardy learns that both of Jennifer's husbands had physically abused her. But Jennifer refuses to allow a defense that presumes her guilt. She is not guilty, she claims. Hardy is now driven to seek an alternative truth a jury can believe.

Ten years ago, a capital murder case in the heart of Texas split the Lynch family in two. Now, estranged lawyer brothers Travis and Jake Lynch find themselves on opposing sides of the courtroom in a high-profile, grisly double-murder case - with another accused criminal’s life on the line. Conscience-stricken Travis left his high-powered law firm to become a public defender, while bullish Jake rose to become district attorney.

When a new client who's been accused of murder - and who bears an astonishing resemblance to Bennie Rosato - asks the crusading criminal defense attorney to take her case, Bennie finds herself entangled in a sticky web of murder, corruption, and violence that threatens to reveal the shocking truth about her own past. If you haven't listened to Lisa Scottoline before, Mistaken Identity will prove to you what her many fans already know: Nobody does it better!