Legal Suspense

Dawn. The English Channel. A small boat arrives crammed with exhausted migrants, not all of whom will make land. Some of the shattered occupants have already paid for their journeys. Others have arrived with a debt still to be paid. One of the migrants isn't fleeing anything. He's not from Europe, or Africa, or the East. He's from Texas, and he's wearing a robe. When the traffickers take some of their passengers to pay for their journey, they also take the man in the robe. That was their first mistake.

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.

In Dark Lady, Richard North Patterson displays the mastery of setting, psychology, and story that makes him unique among writers of suspense, and one of today's most original and enthralling novelists.

Once a wife, mother, and witness to a gruesome crime, Leah Trenton was extended a miraculous olive branch in the form of the state's protected witness program. But for this second chance at life, Leah would have to leave behind her Midwestern roots to the northernmost tip of Maine. Alone and isolated along the banks of the Allagash River, she is determined to focus on the present, on her reclaimed future, but the demons of her past, are relentlessly chipping away at Leah's protected hideaway.

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.

Brigham Theodore is a courtroom brawler, a criminal defense attorney who spends his time slugging it out with the government in court. A year after winning his biggest case, he finds himself at a new firm defending clients of every kind. Drug dealers, gangsters, con men, and thugs are the people he defends every day. For him, the fight is what matters. As the new hotshot lawyer in town, Brigham is referred an engineer accused of euthanizing his wife who was dying of pancreatic cancer.

There’s been a mass shooting with over 23 casualties in Atlanta. FBI agent Blake Wilder and her team are called by D.C. Headquarters to spearhead the case. Upon their arrival to the crime scene, they are greeted with hostility by the field officers present. Unfazed by the tension, Blake begins to sort through the identities of many victims, most of them high profiled lawyers. While attempting to identify a motive, the team sorts through the deceased lawyers' case files.

Corporate litigator Mia Shaw suffers the shock of her life when she finds her colleague and friend brutally murdered. Grief-stricken and furious, Mia vows that she will do anything to seek justice and make the killer pay. The man accused of the murder is a friend of security tech guru Noah Ramirez, but the evidence just doesn't add up. To save his former ATF partner, Noah needs to convince Mia that the real killer is still on the loose. Mia soon has more than the criminal prosecution to worry about, however.

In southeast London, a young mother has been accused of an unthinkable crime: poisoning her own child - and then leaving him to die. The mother, Ellie, is secretive and challenging - she's had a troubled upbringing - but does that mean she's capable of murder? Balancing the case with raising her disabled five-year-old son, criminal defence lawyer Sarah Kellerman sets out in desperate pursuit of the truth. But when her own child becomes unwell, Sarah realises she's been drawn into a dangerous game.

Outside the Hope & Glory pub, a man has been left to die. A victim of extraordinary violence, he will never walk or speak again. He remains in hospital, nameless, until criminal defence lawyer Sarah Kellerman walks onto his ward. Sarah barely recognises the man she once worked with. He was honourable and kind - what was he involved in? Who wanted him dead?

Max Parkman - autistic and whip-smart, emotionally fragile and aggressive - is perfect in his mother's eyes. Until he's accused of murder. Attorney Danielle Parkman knows her teenage son Max's behavior has been getting worse - using drugs and lashing out. But she can't accept the diagnosis she receives at a top-notch adolescent psychiatric facility that her son is deeply disturbed. Dangerous. Until she finds Max, unconscious and bloodied, beside a patient who has been brutally stabbed to death.

Rebecka Martinsson is heading home to Kiruna, the town she'd left in disgrace years before. A Stockholm attorney, Rebecka has a good reason to return: her friend, Sanna, whose brother has been horrifically murdered in the revivalist church his charisma helped create. Beautiful and fragile, Sanna needs someone like Rebecka to remove the shadow of guilt that is engulfing her, to forestall an ambitious prosecutor and a dogged policewoman.

Alex Cooper awakens one morning to news of her own brutal murder. Soon, Manhattan's top sex-crimes prosecutor discovers that the actual victim is film star Isabella Lascar, who had sought refuge at Alex's private retreat. Now it is up to Alex to find the killer before another victim surfaces.

Amanda Travis is a high-powered, 28-year-old lawyer whose greatest likes are spinning classes at her Palm Beach gym and a compliant jury. As for the things she hates, they include nicknames, the color pink, clients who don't follow her advice, and memories. Unfortunately, running from her past becomes a lot harder when one of her ex-husbands calls from her hometown of Toronto with the alarming news that her mother has shot and killed a complete stranger.

Bennie Rosato looks exactly like her identical twin, Alice Connolly, but the darkness in Alice's soul makes them two very different women. Or at least that's what Bennie believes, until she finds herself buried alive at the hands of her twin. Meanwhile, Alice takes over Bennie's life, impersonating her at work and even seducing her boyfriend in order to escape the deadly mess she has made of her own life. But Alice underestimates Bennie and the evil she has unleashed in her twin's psyche, as well as Bennie's determination to stay alive long enough to exact revenge.

Martin H. Ehrengraf, dapper and diabolical, may be Lawrence Block's darkest creation. He's the defense attorney who never sees the inside of a courtroom, because all his clients are innocent - no matter how guilty they may seem. Some even believe themselves to be guilty: They remember pulling the trigger, or wiring the dynamite to their spouse's car, or holding the bloody blade. But things have a way of working out when Martin Ehrengraf is on the case.

Allen Drury has penetrated the world's stormiest political battleground and the smoke-filled committee rooms of the United States Senate to reveal the bitter conflicts set in motion when the president calls upon the Senate to confirm his controversial choice for secretary of state. This novel is a true epic, showing in fascinating detail the minds and motives of the statesmen, the opportunists, the idealists. Advise and Consent is a timeless story with clear echoes of today's headlines.

A girl dies one late, rainy night a few feet from the back door of her home. The girl, Abeba, was born in Ethiopia. Her adoptive parents, Delvin and Betsy Harvey—conservative, white fundamentalist Christians—are charged with her murder.

Thaddeus has everything to lose and the weight of the legal world on his shoulders. A lawyer of four years who has earned his spurs, Murfee finds himself defending three felony crimes - including his own. His new wife has given him a daughter, and he dotes on her. Then the mob comes.

When Matilda Benson solicits the help of Perry Mason, her request seems simple enough: cruise to a gambling ship moored just beyond the twelve-mile limit and buy back the IOUs signed by Miss Benson's niece. But after Mason reaches the floating casino, he discovers problems aplenty - most notably the ship's owner with a bullet hole through his head. Strangely enough, Matilda and her niece are also on board that night...when someone tosses a gun over the railing. Does Perry Mason's client have something to hide?