Legal Thriller Crime Fiction

In Wolf's Revenge, the fifth novel in Lachlan Smith's Shamus Award-winning series, attorney-detective Leo Maxwell seeks an exit strategy from his family's deepening entanglement with a ruthless prison-based gang. Caught between the criminals and the FBI, Leo charts his own path in defending a young woman who was manipulated into brazenly murdering a member of the Aryan Brotherhood in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood.

Meet Michael Seeley, defender of artists' rights, take-no-prisoners intellectual property litigator, and a man on the brink of personal and career collapse. So when United Pictures virtually demands that he fly out to Hollywood to confirm legally that they own the rights to their corporate cash-cow franchise of Spykiller films, he has little choice but to comply.

Taylor Lockwood spends her days working as a paralegal in one of New York's preeminent Wall Street law firms and her nights playing jazz piano anyplace she can. But the rhythm of her life is disrupted when attorney Mitchell Reece requests her help in locating a stolen document that could cost him not only the multimillion-dollar case he's defending but his career as well.

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.

In the dead of night, Josie Bates is ripped from sleep by the sounds of an epic storm raging over Hermosa Beach and a man beating on her door begging her to help Billy Zuni who is drowning in the raging sea. She arrives at the shore just in time to see the teenager pulled from the water, battered and near death. Ready to kill Billy's selfish, neglectful mother, Josie rushes to the Zuni house only to find someone has beaten her to it. Two men lie dead downstairs and Billy's mother clings to life on the floor above.

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.

San Francisco judge Ramsey Hunt, longtime friend to FBI agents Lacey Sherlock and Dillon Savich, begins the murder trial of Clive and Cindy Cahill, only to have federal prosecutor Mickey O’Rourke, known for his relentless, aggressive style, suddenly turn tentative and distracted. Hunt suspects that something is very wrong - and then O’Rourke goes missing and Judge Hunt gets shot in the back. Savich and Sherlock receive news of the attack as a mysterious note is delivered to Savich at the Hoover Building.

Mick McFarland is stunned when he's arrested for murdering business tycoon Edwin Hanson, brother to David Hanson - one of Mick's former clients. Mick is even more shocked when he's confronted with the incriminating evidence: surveillance footage of him stalking the victim and pulling the trigger. As Mick's legal team fights against windmills trying to beat the prosecution in court, his wife, Piper, journeys across the country, trying to win her husband's freedom by going after the man she is convinced is out to destroy Mick and David both.

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.

Detective Manny Alvarez knows the body of a murdered Florida student is only the beginning - his investigation soon reveals a terrifying trend in nightclub abductions. Hotshot Assistant State Attorney Daria DeBianchi works the case, too, hoping it will be the one that makes her career. It will - but for all the wrong reasons. Their only lead, notorious serial killer William Bantling, claims they are looking for more than one murderer. However, in exchange for the truth, he wants off death row.

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 amiable Italian immigrant Pigeon Tony discovers that local drug dealers are pressuring his young neighbor into joining their ranks, he resolves to put an end to the crime wave before it can take over the community. Pigeon Tony knows the law isn’t always on the right side, but it takes only one person to rally a revolution.

A thriving law practice and a happy marriage are almost enough to convince solicitor Eric Ward he has overcome his painful past and started a new life. All it takes is the wrong client for it all to unravel. An investigative journalist beaten to a pulp. A crooked Newcastle businessman living the high life in France. A woman from a half-forgotten past. Former police officer-turned-solicitor Eric Ward represents Eddie Stevens, an investigative reporter on the trail of a hot story.

It started with a haunting image: a Ford Explorer, iridiscent in the moonlight and alone on a desolate stretch of beach. Its owner, Melissa Gibbons, has gone missing. Her husband says she flew the coop. But Los Angeles Deputy DA Rachel Knight is convinced otherwise: Melissa Gibbons has been murdered. So begins the confounding case that Rachel must present before a disbelieving jury. A dissatisfied heiress and her philandering husband - what really happened?

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.