Thursday, August 4, 2016

A Crime of Passion by Scott Pratt

Joe Dillard is a successful defense attorney in a small town in East Tennessee: successful enough that he can be selective about which clients he represents.  The cancer that previously attacked his wife Caroline has returned and he cherishes any time spent with her.  Then a client turns up he cannot refuse.
 
Paul Millius is a wealthy Nashville record label owner who is accused of murdering his eighteen year old protégée, Kasey Cartwright.  Kasey’s career as a country music singer was blossoming under Millius’s direction.  Then one night Paul and Kasey are overheard having a heated discussion and Kasey’s body is found hours later in her hotel room.  When police learn that Paul was the last person to see Kasey alive, he is arrested for her murder.  As rumors circulate about Millius’s reputation as a womanizer, adulterer and ruthless businessman, the court of public opinion finds him guilty.  Millius’s wife, Lana Raines-Millius reaches out to Dillard having learned of his flawless reputation as a defense attorney.  But Joe soon learns there’s no love in the Millius’s marriage.  Lana’s hope is for her husband to be imprisoned for life or worse, be sentenced to death.  Joe wonders if he was hired for his legal skill or his country bumpkin stature.
 
As conspiracy theories begin to emerge, Joe suspects Lana may be behind Kasey’s murder and Paul may have been slated to die in that hotel room as well.  Proving that may be Paul’s best defense and the legal challenge of Joe’s life.  Getting the judge to allow evidence for his ‘some other dude done it’ defense requires legal maneuvering.  And collecting that evidence proves extremely dangerous.  Not only is Joe’s reputation as a lawyer on the line but his life as well.


In A Crime of Passion Joe’s career as a lawyer evolves to yet another level of disenchantment.  In previous books he begins his career as a defense attorney and grows tired of representing drug dealers, rapists and murderers.  He switches sides and becomes a prosecutor only to find the dirty politics and lack of ethical standards of his coworkers unbearable.  He moves back to the defense side, opens his own practice, and attempts to carefully choose his clients but finds he can’t be too discriminating and still make a living.  So the author presents an interesting but popular view on the life of a lawyer.  Can our highly principled, squeaky clean protagonist survive in such a corrupt environment?  Personally, I can’t wait for his next installment to see.

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