BAD LAWYER

Amazon.com
Sid Kaplan is a fallen-from-grace Manhattan lawyer whose career self- destructed after drugs and booze chased him all the way to the bottom of the barrel. After a long battle to become sober and regain his self-respect, he's eking out a living in a crummy one-man office when a big case comes his way. The client, Priscilla Sweet, is accused of murdering her husband, a drug dealer whose bloody death is not in dispute. But Priscilla's motives are. Is she an abuse victim who pulled the trigger in self-defense or a crafty villain who killed her husband for money? Sid's not sure, but the prospect of a juicy trial sure to garner headlines (and new clients) makes him put his misgivings aside and take the case. With the help of Julia and Caleb, the two friends and associates who stuck by him during the bad times, he sets out to clear Priscilla and win back his reputation. But the more he learns, the more he wonders whether Priscilla is all she says she is. When his best friends are killed, he digs even deeper. Priscilla is the most interesting character in the book; multifaceted, by turns winning and chilling, she drives David Cray's second gritty, well- crafted thriller (after Keeplock) to a truly shocking conclusion worthy of O. Henry. Even after reading and rereading the penultimate chapter, the coup de gr鈉e meted out in the courtroom doesn't completely make sense. But that won't keep it from lingering in the mind long after the final sentence. --Jane Adams

Book Description
Sid Kaplan once had it all: a dynamic career in criminal law, success, celebrity, lots of money, and enough arrogance to alienate practically everybody he knew. So no one wept for Sid when booze and cocaine plummeted him to hell. Only now a big case has fallen into Sid's lap, a case that, Sid thinks, can take him back to where he was and wants-no, deserves-to be. Thelma Barrow, a Queens housewife, has sought out Sid to defend her accused daughter, Priscilla, in a media-hot murder case. For Sid, the publicity more than compensates for the pittance Thelma can afford to pay, as the news headlines stories of drugs and violence and an abused white woman who has done in her black husband. Nor is Sid disinclined by the fact that the white woman is a babe-an ice-cold babe who's probably lying about more than a little, but a babe nevertheless. It's when drug dealers show up and insist that Priscilla is holding out on them with $450,000 of their money that matters begin to get more criminally perilous. Then Sid's two roommates-the only friends he's managed not to lose-are killed in an attempt to make Sid himself cough up the dough. Obviously, the case in this gritty, masterfully crafted crime novel is getting to be far more complex, and deadly, than anyone, especially Sid, ever imagined it could be.