Legal Thriller Crime Fiction

James Drinker is a bit of an oddball. A funny-looking, geeky loner, he walks into Jason Kolarich’s office one day with a preemptive concern: two women have recently been murdered, seemingly by the same killer, and Drinker thinks he will be the police’s main suspect. One woman was his ex-girlfriend, he says, and the other was a friend. He’s the only link between the victims and he has no alibi for the night of either murder - surely the police will realize it soon. Believing he’s the target of a frame-up, Drinker hires Kolarich for his defense. Something about James Drinker seems off from the start, but Kolarich doesn’t give it too much thought. Until another murder occurs....

Criminal barrister Charles Holborne may have just escaped the hangman by proving he was framed for murder, but his life is now in ruins. His wife is dead, his high-flying career has morphed into criminal notoriety, and bankruptcy threatens. When the biggest brief of Charles' career unexpectedly lands on his desk, it looks as if he has been thrown a lifeline. But far from keeping him afloat, it drags him ever deeper into the shadowy underworld of 1960s London. Now, not only is his practice at stake, but his very life.

Poppy Rice is home in her D.C. apartment with very little furniture and a stack of boxes she still hasn't unpacked after five years. It's three AM and she's suffering from her usual insomnia, so she watches a tape of the CBS Evening News. Dan Rather is interviewing convicted ax-murderer Rona Leigh Glueck who, in 10 days, will be the first woman executed in Texas since the Civil War. Poppy pauses the tape on a close-up of Rona Leigh's delicate, child-like hands. So maybe it was a lightweight ax?

In the follow-up to best-selling Blood Defense, Samantha is hired as the legal advocate for Cassie Sonnenberg after a brutal stabbing left her father and brother dead, and her mother barely clinging to life. It's a tabloid-ready case that has the nation in an uproar - and Sam facing her biggest challenge yet. Why did Cassie survive? Is she hiding something?

Originally published by Pocket Books as Court of Honor, this classic by Wood - the basis for the 1995 film Broken Trust starring Tom Selleck - is is the story of a sitting judge who finds himself in a dangerous position when he participates in a sting operation investigating fellow judges on the take.

First Counsel: Booktrack Edition adds an immersive musical soundtrack to your audiobook listening experience! White House lawyer Michael Garrick has a relatively anonymous position at a very public address. That is, until he starts dating Nora Harston (secret service code name: Shadow), the sexy and dangerously irresistible daughter of the President. But the confident young attorney thinks he can handle the pressure. Until, out on a date, Nora and Michael see something they shouldn't. To protect her, he admits to something he shouldn't.

Joe Parker is Manchester's most ingenious criminal defence lawyer. Sam Parker is Manchester's most tenacious homicide detective. Both bear the burden of the unsolved murder of their sister fifteen years earlier. And both have a stake in a new series of murders that has shaken their city to its core. Ronnie Bagley is locked up and facing trial for the murder of his girlfriend and baby and there's only one lawyer he wants to defend him: Joe Parker.

Stan's bankruptcy client, Maureen Thompson, is accused of her husband's murder. Her alleged motive is the proceeds of a large insurance policy on her husband's life that would cure her financial woes. Stan assigns the case to his partner, Paula Waters, who at first is excited about getting a new high-profile murder case but her excitement is soon dampened when she learns this isn't the first of Maureen Thompson's husbands to be hacked to death with an ice pick!

Courting Death finds Melanie Wilkerson (from Cotton, book two of the Clarkeston Chronicles) and Arthur Hughes working uncomfortably together in the chambers of a famous federal judge. While Melanie neglects her duties as a law clerk to investigate the mysterious death of a young woman in the courthouse five years earlier, Arthur wades through the horrific habeas corpus appeals of two prisoners: an infamous serial killer and a pathetic child murderer.

Ry Slaight was a rebellious cadet who almost destroyed West Point when he exposed and solved the murder of a gay cadet in 1969. Now, nearly three decades later, Slaight's been promoted to Lieutenant General and appointed Superintendent of the Military Academy. When a female cadet dies during parade, an autopsy establishes that she had sex with multiple partners the night before. Was she the victim of a gang rape? Was there a cadet orgy? Don't ask. Don't tell.

Nobody likes The Complaints - they're the cops who investigate other cops. Complaints and Conduct Department, to give them their full title, but known colloquially as 'the Dark Side', or simply 'The Complaints'. Malcolm Fox works for The Complaints. He's just had a result, and should be feeling good about himself....but there's a cop called Jamie Breck, and he's dirty. Problem is, no one can prove it.

Prosecutor Elsie Arnold loves her small-town home in the Ozark hills, but she's been waiting for a murder to come along and make her career. So when a body is found under a bridge, throat cut, Elsie jumps at the chance to work on the case, even if it's alongside the brash new chief assistant, Chuck Harris - and her latest flame, Detective Bob Ashlock.

Attorney Sabre O. Brown is called upon to defend an abused 14 year-old boy of murder after a body is discovered in a shallow grave with the word GOOF scrawled across his forehead. Years later when more bodies are unearthed baring the same GOOF signature, two more abused juveniles are accused of the gruesome slayings.

Cal Claxton is determined to reinvent himself as a small-town lawyer in the aftermath of his wife's suicide. Once a hard-charging Los Angeles prosecutor, he nowlives in solitude in an old farmhouse overlooking Oregon's wine country. When a scruffy, tattooed kid shows up asking for help in solving a cold case - that of his mother's murder - Cal wants to say no. Times are tough, and he's no private eye, anyway. But the kid, who calls himself Picasso, has ridden a bicycle in the rain all the way from Portland, and something about his determination touches Cal.

A newly minted member of Henley & Hargrove, Pasadena's oldest and snobbiest law firm, Jack MacTaggart is assigned to handle an insurance claim on behalf of socialite Sydney Everett. Hush Puppy, Sydney's champion show horse, has died unexpectedly, and attending veterinarian George Wells confides to Jack that the great horse's death was anything but natural. Jack's investigation leads him into the high-stakes world of professional show jumping and down a path to romance, intrigue, and an old blackmail scheme that further implicates his client.

DI Brook thought the nightmare was over - but the Reaper has left behind a horrifying legacy…. When an accidental drowning is found to be murder, Brook’s past relationship with the victim makes him the prime suspect. A fact made worse when he receives a chilling message urging him to continue the work of the serial killer The Reaper, the deranged vigilante who had previously terrorised the UK.

He's a serial killer. A murderer of young women, all killed in brutal attacks. But despite Hamish Wolfe's conviction, he's always stuck to his story - he's innocent, and he's been wrongly imprisoned. And now he wants someone to investigate and, more importantly, to write his story. Maggie Rose is a notorious defense attorney and writer whose specialty is getting convictions overturned. At first Maggie is reluctant to even acknowledge Hamish's requests to meet, ignoring his letters. But this is a very charismatic and persuasive man, good looking and intelligent.

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.

University is supposed to be the best time of your life. But Imo’s first week is quickly going from bad to worse. A stalker is watching her flat, following her every move, and Imo suspects that her new roommates are hiding dark secrets. When one of them suddenly disappears, the trauma of Imo’s recent past comes hurtling back to haunt her. And she begins to realise just how little she knows about the people she lives with....