The call comes at midnight. It looks like a tragic and petty murder - a rising star in San Francisco's legal firmament found shot in a dark alley. But for homicide lieutenant Abe Glitsky, the crime cuts horribly close to home - unknown to anyone, the victim was his daughter. Seething, Glitsky leans hard on his only suspect - a homeless heroin addict found lingering over his daughter's body, with her jewelry in his pocket and a smoking gun in his hand. The city's embattled, ambitious D.A. Sharron Pratt sees an opportunity to revive her troubled administration by publicly declaring war on the killer and vowing to deliver a death penalty, putting the case on the fast track to certain conviction. Unable to watch a man die for Pratt's political gain, Dismas Hardy warily takes on the defense. But as Hardy's crusade to secure his client a fair hearing ensues, a lethal web of political corruption, legal conspiracy, and cold-blooded murder begins to unravel. In a case that will send shock waves through San Francisco and echo in the private lives of its most prominent citizens, the hearing is just the beginning.
In Jury of One, Shelly Trotter, an able and determined lawyer and a children's rights advocate, is thrust into a world in which she's completely unschooled - the criminal court. Her client is a seventeen-year-old accused of killing a policeman, and she begins to suspect that he may have been involved in an undercover operation to entrap dirty cops, though his role in the scheme remains unclear. Was he the target or the bait-and what does the prosecution really have against him? Then comes the shocker: Shelly fears that she has a connection to this boy, something she has kept secret for years, knowledge that she has hidden from her family and friends for most of her adult life. And as the evidence against the boy mounts, she finds that nothing - not legal ethics, not a statewide political campaign that could swing in the balance-will stop her from keeping him off death row. For with this client, she is truly a jury of one.
Star Witness is about a man on trial for murder - a man recognized as one of the film industry's most successful writers/directors, a man of almost mythic drive and talent, and someone who looks more guilty with every passing witness. Attorney Joseph Antonelli - suave, philosophical, fearless, and cagey - takes up the director's defense for the murder of his wife, the actress every woman wants to be and every man wants to possess. Despite Antonelli's flawless examination of the prosecution's witnesses, the jury finds fewer and fewer reasons to doubt. Then the director shows Antonelli the script he considers his masterpiece - a re-imagining of Orson Welles's Citizen Kane - with a visionary film director as its hero. In this story-within-a-story, the accused reveals his version of the tragedy - the secrets of his marriage, and the ominous events that led to his wife's death. In it we see the way art can imitate life - and unmask a killer even the court can't find. Star Witness is a breath-taking novel about the nature of fame and the ever-confusing intersection of truth and fantasy, dream and desire.
As an attorney championing desperate people, Nina Reilly has skirted the edges of legal ethics in pursuit of a just result but she has never before broken the rule of absolute protection of her clients' secrets. One September night at Lake Tahoe when her unlocked truck is stolen, her life changes forever. Inside are her most sensitive cases, complete with the sometimes brutally candid notes she took while interviewing her clients. It's the event that every attorney most fears - one careless moment that undoes a lifetime of building trust and respect. The worst has happened - the secrets are being revealed one by one, in ways that will cause the greatest harm. Nina's own clients complain to the State Bar of California, and suddenly Nina is fighting for her license and her livelihood in a Kafkaesque legal proceeding that may ultimately lead to her disbarment. In desperation, Nina hires a top San Francisco lawyer, Jack McIntyre, to represent her. She ought to know he's tough as well as cynical and funny - he's her ex-husband. And as personal tensions erupt between Jack and Nina's on-the-edge investigator Paul van Wagoner...as reputations are ruined and people begin to die...a malign pattern of rage and revenge comes into focus. Someone is bent on destroying the lives of her clients and, in the process, destroying Nina Reilly.
Nina has just received a last-minute call from her old boss and mentor in Monterey County, California, where she is enjoying the breathtaking scenery and spending time with her boyfriend, P.I. Paul van Wagoner. Klaus Pohlmann is in desperate straits and begs Nina to take over a seemingly unwinnable case: A luckless two-time felon named Stefan Wyatt has robbed a grave and made off with the long-buried bones of a Russian émigré. When he is caught and arrested, further devastating evidence found in the grave suggests that Stefan is guilty of a far more deadly crime. A young woman, a classmate of Stefan's, has been killed, and he is accused of her murder. Now, as a result of California's Third Strike law, Wyatt is looking at twenty-five years to life whether he's convicted of grand theft or murder. Either way, he's in big trouble. With her client's blood DNA found in the dead woman's apartment, Nina faces an uphill battle. Suspecting that her hapless client has been set up, Nina brings in a brilliant forensic pathologist who comes up with a startling theory about the case that could rewrite a crucial page of European history. As the evidence mounts against Nina's client, Paul launches his own investigation into the shadowy past of the two-decades-old skeleton. But long-held secrets nearly get him killed and reveal a more insidious evil at work - and an extraordinary story dating back to tsarist Russia and the Romanov court. As Wyatt edges closer to the unluckiest verdict of his young life, Nina makes an astounding discovery that just might save her client - or expose a killer who could bury them all.
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. Homicide lieutenant Abe Glitsky, though hindered by the inept bunglings of two politically appointed cops assigned to the investigation, quickly sets his sights on Kensing. Desperate and in need of an attorney, Kensing turns to lawyer Dismas Hardy for his defense. But as the pressure mounts to indict Kensing, Hardy goes on the offensive, believing that the murder had little to do with his client, and everything to do with business. Hardy knows that all is not well with the HMO, and makes a terrifying discovery: too many patients have been dying, many of them victims of murder - and it looks like it is the hospital that is killing them. His own marriage tested and his family strained as he struggles to save his client, Hardy must uncover a twisting conspiracy of avarice and violence that takes the lives it is sworn to save. A timely and gripping novel that puts lives - and a long-standing friendship - at grave risk.
Masterful storytelling. . .gripping legal drama . . .relentless suspense - these are the hallmarks of Perri O'Shaughnessy's work. Critics hail her legal thrillers as "terrific . . . will keep you turning the pages into the night" (USA Today) and "a real puzzler. . .with twists diabolical enough to take to court" (The New York Times Book Review). Now the New York Times bestselling author of Move to Strike returns with Writ of Execution, an electrifying tale that plunges attorney Nina Reilly into a shadowy world of high-stakes gambling and cold-blooded murder. In the mountain resort town of South Lake Tahoe, Nina Reilly is known for taking on the underdog cases, the kind that can make - or break - her one-woman law practice. Her latest case begins in the middle of a summer night when she is called away from a very personal visit to her investigator Paul Van Wagoner's hotel room to meet with a desperate new client at her office. The frightened young Washoe Indian woman gives her name as Jessie Potter. She has just hit one of the biggest jackpots in Nevada history, and the men in suits are waiting to hand her the million-dollar first installment when they know her real identity. With time running out, Nina helps her client devise a brilliant plan to collect the money while keeping her true identity a secret. The check's due to clear in ten days-and Nina's got her hands full as powerful interests line up to grab the money. The Nevada Gaming Control Board is looking into allegations that the jackpot was rigged. The man sitting on the seat just before the jackpot hit says it's his, and he doesn't mind going outside the law to get it. And the wealthy man stalking Nina's client has managed to attack the jackpot winnings with the help of an unscrupulous local lawyer, Jeff Riesner, using a legal maneuver called a writ of execution. To fight it, Paul Van Wagoner flies to Hawaii and digs up a dark moment in Jessie's past. The odds of Jessie ever collecting are starting to look hopeless. For Nina, what began as a fight for an underdog in federal court soon escalates into something very different and far more dangerous. Jessie has a secret, and she needs that money for a very good reason. By the time Nina discovers that Jessie is withholding vital information, it might be too late for her client and even for Nina herself. Because somewhere in the darkening Tahoe night, people are dying. A killer is exacting chilling vengeance in a case where the writ of execution has become more than a legal maneuver; it's a death warrant.
Dismas Hardy is finally on top: As a managing partner at his thriving, newly reorganized law firm, he's a rainmaker and fix-it guy for clients leery of taking their chances in a courtroom. Now Hardy's up-and-coming associate, Amy Wu, brings him a high-profile case: Andrew Bartlett, the seventeen-year-old son of a prominent San Francisco family, has been arrested for the double slaying of his girlfriend and his English teacher. The D.A. wants to try him as an adult. Determined to get the case into juvenile court, and overwhelmed by the mounting evidence against her client, Wu asks Hardy to sit second chair for her in Bartlett's defense.
As the Bartlett case moves swiftly to trial, another series of murders grips the city. An unseen killer seems to be shooting citizens wantonly, and as fear and anxiety build around the Executioner (as he is quickly dubbed in the ensuing media frenzy), Abe Glitsky, the newly promoted deputy chief of the Investigations Bureau, leads the desperate hunt to stop him.
With the city on the verge of panic, Hardy and Glitsky are locked in a race against time - to save a client and to catch a murderer. But nothing is what it seems, and as both men's cases twist and turn to their shocking conclusions, the very foundations of San Francisco's legal system will be shaken to the core.
Troy Phelan is a self-made billionaire, one of the richest men in the United States. He is also eccentric, reclusive, confined to a wheelchair, and looking for a way to die. Nate O'Riley is a high-octane Washington litigator who's lived too hard, too fast, for too long. Emerging from his fourth stay in rehab he knows returning to the real world is always difficult, but this time it's going to be murder. Rachel Lane is a young woman who chose to give her life to God, who walked away from the modern world with all its strivings and trappings and encumbrances, and went to live and work with a primitive tribe of Indians in the deepest jungles of Brazil. In a story that mixes legal suspense with a remarkable adventure their lives are forever altered by the startling secret of The Testament.
How many people get to solve their own murder?
Anne Murphy is smart, gorgeous, and young, the red-headed rookie at the Philadelphia law firm of Rosato & Associates. She leaves town for the 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.
She tries to go it alone but quickly realizes that she'll have to trust people she barely knows -- colleagues who hate her guts, a homicide squad who wants her out of the crime-fighting business, and a new love who inconveniently happens to be opposing counsel. The investigation takes all of Anne's boldness and ingenuity -- plus a pair of red satin hot pants. But her knack for courting trouble makes it almost impossible for Anne to play well with others, defend the lawsuit, and fight her urge to sleep with the enemy. Then an unexpected event places her in lethal jeopardy and leaves her with everything to lose -- including her life.
The winner of every major literary award in crime fiction, Laura Lippman brings back her complex and vulnerably human Baltimore P.I., Tess Monaghan, in a tense, expertly spun tale of a family torn asunder by forces it can barely comprehend.
Mark Rubin's family is missing -- and the police can't do a thing because all the evidence indicates that his wife left willingly. So the successful furrier turns to Tess Monaghan, hoping she can help him find his wife and three children. Tess doesn't know quite what to make of Rubin, a wealthy Orthodox Jew who refuses to shake her hand and doles out vitally important information in grudging dribs and drabs. According to her client, he and his beautiful wife, Natalie, had a flawless, happy marriage. Yet one day, without any warning or explanation, Natalie gathered up their children and vanished.
Tapping into a network of fellow investigators spread across the country, Tess is soon able to locate the runaway wife and her stolen progeny, moving furtively from state to state, town to town. But the Rubins are not alone. A man is traveling with them, a stranger described by witnesses as "handsome" and "charming" but otherwise unremarkable to these casual observers, who have no way of sensing the fury beneath his smooth surface.
The motive behind Natalie's reckless flight lies somewhere in the gap between what Mark Rubin will not say and what he refuses to believe. An intricate web of betrayal and vengeance is already beginning to unravel, as memory begets rage and rage leads to desperation -- and murder. And suddenly much more than one man's future happiness and stubborn pride are in peril; the lives of three innocent children are dangling by the slenderest of threads.
Three thrilling titles from one of America's most popular bestselling authors, together in a special value collection.
A Time to Kill - For ten days, with burning crosses and the crack of sniper fire spreading through the streets of Clanton, the nation sits spellbound as young defense attorney Jake Brigance struggles to save his client's life...and then his own...
The Firm - When Mitch McDeere, an ambitious law student from Harvard chooses the Memphis tax firm of Bendini, Lambert & Locke, he finds himself caught between the FBI, who wants an informant inside the firm, and the firm itself, which will make him a very rich man-or a very dead one.
The Client - This is the story of eleven-year-old Mark Sway, who witnessed the bizarre suicide of a New Orleans attorney. Just before he dies, the lawyer tells Mark a deadly secret concerning the recent murder of a Louisiana senator whose accused killer, Mafia thug Barry Muldanno, is about to go to trial.
