Vorab-RezensentenDavid Ellis

Hot-shot attorney Jason Kolarich returns in the stunning new thriller from the Edgar Award winning author. Jason Kolarich is in a bad way—physically wounded and emotionally wrecked after his last case, he’s selfmedicating with prescription painkillers, too much alcohol, and brief affairs. When one of these affairs turns sour, Kolarich is left fending off the advances of a beautiful, nefarious woman who may be more than she appears. . . . And Kolarich’s next client isn’t going to make life any easier. Marshall Renfro is the prime suspect in a string of serial murders, and hires Kolarich as his defender. In a privileged attorney-client setting, Renfro discloses his many sins. Soon afterward, Renfro disappears, leaving behind a wake of mayhem for which Kolarich is now the police’s main person of interest . . . including a killing to which he is intimately connected. Faced with a murder charge and unable to prove his own innocence without breaking his oath, Kolarich must hunt to learn the truth about Renfro, the series of brutal killings, and why he’s been set up to take the fall. The answers will be beyond anything he could have imagined.

When Jason Kolarich accepts the case of a homeless Iraq War veteran accused of murdering a young paralegal, his course seems clear: to mount an insanity defense for a man suffering so badly from post-traumatic stress disorder that he has no real memory of the crime. But as Kolarich digs deeper, he realizes that, unlikely as it seems, his client is probably innocent.

The twenty-four-hour news cycle is abuzz when the police arrest homeless Iraq war veteran Mike Stoller for the murder of a young paralegal on her way home from night-school class. Stoller doesn't deny killing the woman, but his post-traumatic stress disorder is so bad that he has no real memory of that night. Jason Kolarich agrees to take the case only weeks before trial, and realizes that, unlikely as it seems, his client is probably innocent. The murdered paralegal had been tracing a money trail leading to a conspiracy of terrorists who come from the last place you'd expect: corporate America. Her murder was no random crime, and the wrong man was charged — leaving Jason Kolarich racing to save Stoller while simultaneously preventing a terrorist's bomb from detonating in his city.

Jason Kolarich, former college linebacker and former up-and-coming criminal defense attorney, has spent the last year struggling to recover from a horrific tragedy: the death of his wife and baby daughter in a car accident. On the night of their deaths, Kolarich was at the office, awaiting a call that never came. The call—from a confidential informant named Ernesto Ramirez—was supposed to give Kolarich evidence to exonerate his client, powerful politician Hector Amundo, charged with corruption and conspiracy to commit murder. But the confidential informant wound up dead, most likely because someone knew he was about to spill the beans. Kolarich blames himself not only for his wife and child’s death—he should have been driving that night—but for the death of the informant as well. He can’t bring back his family, but he can find out who killed Ernesto Ramirez, and hopefully bring the murderer to justice. Problem is, Ernesto Ramirez was in bed with some very bad people. Kolarich’s guns-blazing approach to justice lands him smack in the middle of an FBI probe of Illinois’s deeply corrupt and notoriously foul-mouthed governor. Kolarich had tried to go outside the law, but to avoid jail, he’s forced to wear a wire and enters into a world of wiretaps, double-dealing and kickbacks. But as he works his way up the ladder and wins the crooked governor’s trust, Kolarich discovers that the murder of his informant was only the tip of the iceberg. The breach of trust runs up to the highest levels of power, and exposing it may drag Kolarich into the fight of his life.