Legal Thriller Crime Fiction

Take a no-holds-barred proxy war for a rich Texas oil company, with Jerry Conway, its young president, fighting for survival. Add a beautiful woman in a mudpack and not much else who gives up a freshly fired .38 to Conway before she shows him the door. Top it off with the body of another young woman with a bullet in her chest fired by the same gun, and you have the recipe for the perfect murder - and the perfect frame-up.

On a steamy August evening, after an exhausting day in the courtroom, Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cooper joins her longtime pals and partners-in-investigation, NYPD detectives Mike Chapman and Mercer Wallace, at a somber crime site. In her ten years as a sex crimes prosecutor, Alex has seen many victims, but few more poignant than today's, pulled from the water with her hands and feet obscenely tied to a ladder. Sleep comes uneasily after such a vision, but the knowledge that monsters walk the city's streets, preying on the innocent, motivates Alex and her colleagues with their sometimes heartbreaking work. Perhaps this time they will be lucky. A "cold hit" will match DNA from the crime scene with a suspect's DNA profile in the police database. Or is there a more sinister kind of "cold hit" that claimed the victims life in this case? Who was she? Her elegant clothes and manicured nails suggest affluent connections, but just how well connected suprises even Alex. Illuminating and inspiring, Cold Hit takes us from the paint-chipped offices of cops and D.A.s to the elegant restaurants of Alex's privileged Upper East Side life. The contrast is stunning, but it's all part of the extraordinary world that author Linda Fairstein has brought so vividly to life in this magnificent novel of suspense.

Twenty years after the unsolved case of Stacey Walker's disappearance went cold, a Silicon Valley executive hires the retired Menlo Park police detective Hank Madden to find her body and track down her missing husband, the prime suspect in her unsolved murder.

A twelfth dynasty mummified princess, in a huge sarcophagus, is about to take a long voyage from New York City to Cairo as part of a routine museum exchange. But Cleopatra is missing, and in her place is the not-so-mummified body of a much younger woman. Assistant D.A. Alex Cooper must explore the elegant Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the array of beasts and bones at the Museum of Natural History. Somewhere, deep within the bowels of one of these great cultural centers, a killer may wait.

Ansel Largent is a respected Chicago attorney; ferocious in the courtroom but a winner with the jury. Happy at home with wife Libby, a stroke victim. Happy at the office with Melinda, a married woman with a special interest in him. When everything unravels in one night, Ansel’s life is put under the microscope, and his plastic character brings his sanity into question. Thaddeus Murfee is hired to defend his most complicated trial yet, but when all the chips are down, even he is struck speechless at the outcome.

The dead body found in Flagstaff is not hard to identify - the District Attorney had been a well known figure. His wife admits that she pulled the trigger, but her attorney Thaddeus Murfee finds a confusing mess of evidence that tells a different story. When a beautiful teen girl arrives, Thad has to make a decision with terrifying consequences. The riveting story of one lawyer’s attempt to redeem himself, one wife’s attempt to free herself, and one young girl’s hope of a new life after years of unspeakable abuse.

Archer Keats, a prominent businessman, is arrested for the brutal murder of his wife. His legal defense team approaches Quint about joining them as an investigator. Grudgingly, Quint accepts, but quickly realizes this isn't a simple case of "did he or didn't he?" There's a lot more going on and a whirlwind of suspects begin to emerge.

I’m a Coroner. I spend my life laying things to rest . . . When lawyer, Jenny Cooper, is appointed Severn Vale District Coroner, she’s hoping for a quiet life and space to recover from a traumatic divorce, but the office she inherits from the recently deceased Harry Marshall contains neglected files hiding dark secrets and a trail of buried evidence. Could the tragic death in custody of a young boy be linked to the apparent suicide of a teenage prostitute and the fate of Marshall himself? Jenny’s curiosity is aroused.

When he’s recruited by Walker & Company, the most distinguished investment bank on Wall Street, starry-eyed MBA Richard Blum can’t believe his luck. Sadly, his fantasy world comes to a crashing end when he learns that some crooks have a taste for Gucci loafers and Saville Row suits. CEO Jack Grass and Mickey Steinberg, head of Mergers and Acquisitions, are running an insider trading ring right under his nose. Even worse, to keep the Feds off their trail, they made sure Richard appeared to be a key player.

Hollywood's latest blockbuster is all set to premiere - until a faded superstar claims the script was stolen from her. To defend the studio, in steps the Harold Firm, one of Los Angeles's top entertainment litigation firms and as much a part of the glamorous scene as the studios themselves. As a newly minted partner, it's Rory Calburton's case, and his career, to win or lose.

Alex has been an executioner for most of his adult life. He has experienced the final moments before life is drained from hardened criminals, though he has never yet executed a woman. Following the case of Sara Grainger, Alex is shocked to find that regardless of a seeming lack of evidence, the mother and father of the victim are able to buy a result. Alice, a nurse in the hospital, knows that Sara is innocent. To all intent and purposes, the accident was a quirk of fate. However, will the execution take place? Will there be a reprieve? Will justice be served?

When crime lord Jimmy Nunzio is caught, knife in hand, over the body of his daughter’s lover and his own archenemy, he turns to Mick McFarland to take up his defense. Usually the courtroom puppeteer, McFarland quickly finds himself at the end of Nunzio’s strings. Struggling to find grounds for a not-guilty verdict on behalf of a well-known killer, Mick is hamstrung by Nunzio’s refusal to tell him what really happened. On the other side of the law, Mick’s wife, Piper, is working to free Darlene Dowd, a woman sentenced to life in prison for her abusive father’s violent death.

Criminal defense lawyer Harrison "Hawk" Bennett is as fearless in the courtroom as he once was a Special Forces Green Beret in Vietnam. When a Buddhist Monk, a former Vietcong Colonel, appears in Hawk’s office seeking help, it changes everything Hawk believed about the war. Nguyen Duc Thuan is not just an old soldier turned to a new calling. He was an adversary Hawk spent months tracking in Vietnam. Tracking and, he thought until a moment ago, killing. Hawk now faces a choice: defend the monk against a government intent on protecting its heroes and secrets, or give in to the old hatred seared into his memories of Vietnam.

All Lock Gilkenney wants is a family. But he'll have to cross the line to get one. Lock is a dedicated investigator at Child Protective Services. An anonymous report of neglect comes in. He responds and finds the kids in good health. Lock concludes the report was a ruse, possibly part of a scheme to make Natalie Mannheim, the kids' mother, look bad in an upcoming divorce trial. Natalie needs Lock's expertise to help her win custody - and a multimillion-dollar divorce settlement.

When a veteran cop tries to arrest baseball's home run king, one of them ends up on trial and the other one ends up dead. A routine stakeout is almost over when Dave Mackno decides to pursue a speeding Porsche. It's a decision that will have deadly consequences. That's because the Porsche is being driven by Remo Centrella, baseball's home run king, who is half-drunk and at the tail-end of a steroid cycle that makes him think he's bulletproof.

Thirteen men have died in a London prison. Barrister Elliot Rook QC, who risks losing everything if his secret criminal past is revealed, must defend Charli Meadows, the vulnerable single mother accused of smuggling the deadly tainted drugs inside. But just as Rook becomes suspicious of those closest to Charli, a note arrives at his flat - threatening violence if the trial is not called off.

Charles Holborne has cemented his reputation as a respected murder trial lawyer, who is near unbeatable in the courtroom. But he is still on the radar of the notorious Kray Twins and before long he finds himself drawn into one of their darker scandals.

A simple domestic abuse case turns deadly when the alleged abuser is killed and Stephanie Ann "Sam" McRae's client disappears. When a friend asks Sam to find Melanie Hayes, the Maryland attorney is drawn into a complex case of murder and identity theft that has her running from the mob, breaking into a strip club and forming a shaky alliance with an offbeat private investigator to discover the truth about Melanie and her ex-boyfriend.

Gifted young New York lawyer Alec Brno gets the career boost of a lifetime: The chance to try a huge fraud case that's making international headlines. But he risks it all when he falls for an alluring young woman whose estranged husband is a sadistic Mafia don - and the criminal mastermind behind Alec's case. This fast-paced legal thriller set in the Mad Men era grabs you and doesn't let go. Moving from Wall Street power centers to Maine fishing towns, Pardon the Ravens follows Alec's journey.

Join prosecutor Mia Quinn as she tries to bring justice to Seattle in the Mia Quinn Mysteries: A Matter of Trust, A Deadly Business, and Lethal Beauty—now available as a 3-in-1 audiobook!