Fiction

Maximum Security

Name: Maximum Security
Author: Rose Connors
ISBN: 9781451613094

by Rose Connors

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Overview

IS IT EVER WISE FOR AN ATTORNEY TO DEFEND HER LOVER'S EX-LOVER?

At the request of her law partner and lover, Harry Madigan, attorney Marty Nickerson agrees to defend beautiful Louisa Rawlings against the charge of first-degree murder in the bludgeoning death of her wealthy husband. Marty is both intrigued and disturbed by Louisa since she used to be Harry's girlfriend but is her own polar opposite. The DA believes Louisa was motivated by greed but Marty's gut tells her the murderer was driven by something far more personal.

As Marty builds her client's defense, she encounters Louisa's handsome ex-husband, her surly stepdaughter, and the girl's deadbeat boyfriend. But as the evidence against Louisa mounts and Marty can't count on help from her male associates who are dangerously bewitched by Louisa, she must rely on her own well-honed legal instincts and passion for justice to make sure a brutal killer doesn't go free.

Synopsis

Back to defend the ex-lover of Harry Madigan, attorney Marty Nickerson must juggle her own undeniable intrigue of her law partner and lover’s past and her gut feeling that this murder was driven by something far more personal than anyone suspects in this crime novel by award-winning author Rose Connor.

At the request of her law partner and lover, Marty Nickerson has taken on the case of Louisa Rawlings, the ex-lover of Harry, who happens to be Marty’s law partner and current lover. While defending Louisa against the charge of first-degree murder in the bludgeoning death of her wealthy husband, Marty finds herself both intrigued and disturbed by Harry’s ex-girlfriend, as the girls of his past and his present have nothing in common.

As Marty builds her client’s defense, she encounters Louisa’s handsome ex-husband, her surly stepdaughter, and the girl’s deadbeat boyfriend. But as evidence against Louisa mounts and Marty is unable to count on her male associates who are dangerously bewitched by Louisa, she finds she must rely on her own well-honed legal instincts and passion for justice to make sure a brutal killer doesn’t go free.

“An enjoyable legal thriller… a nicely detailed Cape Cod setting, appealing and realistically rendered characters, and an engaging romantic relationship.” – Booklist

About the Author, Rose Connors

Rose Connors, whose debut novel, Absolute Certainty, won the Mary Higgins Clark Award, grew up in Philadelphia and received her law degree from Duke in 1984. A trial attorney for eighteen years, she's had experience from the prosecutorial and defense sides of the courtroom, and has exasperated any number of judges in both capacities. She is admitted to practice in both Washington State and Massachusetts and lives with her family on Cape Cod, where she is at work on the next Marty Nickerson novel.

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Editorials

Library Journal

Marty is in a fix: law partner and lover Harry wants her to defend his old flame, Luisa, an obvious gold digger accused of doing in her rich husband. Connors won the 2002 Mary Higgins Clark Award. Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A Cape Cod attorney's third hopeless case may be an uphill battle for Connors-and her readers as well. Years before he became Marty Nickerson's partner and lover, Harry Madigan was smitten with one of his law-school classmates, a statuesque southern beauty who couldn't imagine why he'd waste his future on criminal law. Now that she's divorced from more highly paid Glen Powers (trusts and estates) and widowed of even more prosperous Herbert Rawlings (corporate mergers and acquisitions), guilelessly greedy Louisa Rawlings just might need to get reacquainted with the criminal bar. Det. Lt. Mitch Walker isn't sure he buys her story about being out on the links and coming home to find her husband and his boat, the Carolina Girl, missing. And once Herb's body surfaces, tied to some fishing tackle that practically guaranteed it would bob up after a week, the Chatham Police Department is even more suspicious of Louisa's fingerprints on the murder weapon and her two million motives for murder. Insisting that he can't defend Louisa himself, Harry passes him off to Marty and their junior associate, Kevin Kydd, and in a flash the whole firm is legally compromised, their future almost as grim as Louisa's and not much more interesting. Though Judge Leon Long is predictably charmed by Louisa's demure courtroom outbursts, Barnstable County District Attorney Geraldine Schilling seems determined to lock her up for life-unless, of course, Marty can find evidence against Herb's daughter Anastasia, her deadbeat companion Lance Phillips, Louisa's financial advisor Steven Collier, or some other convenient alternative. What are the odds?No ethical quiddities, no fraught cross-examinations, no courtroom coups, nobig surprises of any kind whatsoever. After two splendid outings (Temporary Sanity, 2003, etc.), Marty's certainly entitled to a breather, and that's exactly what this fast-moving, deeply ordinary case is. Agent: Nancy Yost/Lowenstein-Yost Associates, Inc.