Overview
Finalist for the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction:
New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni delivers another gripping legal thriller in his popular David Sloane series. The case? Defending the woman he loves against a charge of murder.
A year after the devastating murder of his wife, attorney David Sloane has returned to Seattle after three months in Mexico. At a black-tie dinner where he’s been persuaded to give the keynote address, Sloane reconnects with Barclay Reid, opposing counsel in his most prominent case. Barclay is suffering from her own personal tragedy—the death of her teenage daughter from a drug overdose. In the aftermath, Barclay has begun an intense crusade against the Russian drug traffickers she holds responsible for her daughter’s death, pursuing them with a righteousness that matches Sloane’s own zeal for justice. Despite their adversarial past, Sloane is drawn to Barclay and for the first time since his wife died, he finds himself beginning to have romantic feelings again.
But when Barclay’s crusade stalls and a Russian drug dealer turns up dead, she stands accused of murder, and Sloane is her chosen defender. Amid the swirling media frenzy, in his first criminal case, Sloane finds himself once again in harm’s way, while mounting evidence suggests that Barclay is a woman with many secrets—and may not be quite as innocent as she seems.
With his signature fast-paced, page-turning action and exhilarating plot twists, Robert Dugoni once again proves why he’s so often been named the heir to Grisham’s literary throne.
Editorials
From the Publisher
“Dugoni has done it again!” —Lisa Gardner“DUGONI HAS CLAIMED HIS OWN POSITION ON THE LEGAL THRILLER A-LIST.” —Booklist
“DUGONI’S FINEST BOOK TO DATE.” —Library Journal (starred review)
Publishers Weekly
At the start of Dugoni's fourth legal thriller, the best yet in the series (after Bodily Harm), featuring Seattle attorney David Sloane, he attends his first public event since his wife's murder a year earlier, a benefit to promote legal aid services, where he literally runs into attorney Barclay Reid, an adversary from a previous case. Reid is also in mourning—for her college age daughter, Carly, who died of a heroin overdose. Reid mounts a charm offensive to persuade Sloane to represent her in a wrongful death suit against the Russian gangster, Filyp Vasiliev, who was behind the heroin sale that killed Carly and who has just beaten federal criminal charges after a judge tossed out crucial evidence at a pretrial hearing. The shooting death of Vasiliev in his Seattle home derails the developing romance between Sloane and Reid as well as the civil case. While many will anticipate the ending twist, Dugoni conveys the legalese in digestible form. (June)Booklist
“Dugoni has often been described as a challenger to Turow and other big names in the legal-thriller genre, but at this point, he’s claimed his own position on the A-list. A must read for fans of courtroom drama from Grisham to Turow to Erle Stanley Gardner.” —Booklist