Showing results by author "Steve Martini" in All Categories

Terry Scarborough is a legal scholar and provocateur who craves headline-making celebrity, but with his latest book he may have gone too far. In it he resurrects forgotten language in the U.S. Constitution - and hints at a missing letter of Thomas Jefferson's - that threatens to divide the nation.

Martini delivers Paul Madriani's most challenging case yet: One pitting a drug-addicted mother against her daughter's newly rich grandfather in a contentious custody case that leads to criminal accusations and ultimately murder. Madriani takes on the case of Jonah Hale, an elderly man in terrible straits. As a result of their only child Jessica's longtime drug addiction, Jonah and his wife have been raising their eight-year-old granddaughter, Amanda. On the heels of Jonah's multimillion-dollar state lottery win, Jessica revives her interest in mothering.

Together with his partner, Harry Hinds, Madriani must piece together the threads of a decades-old conspiracy involving priceless gold coins, an aging American spy, a disaffected Russian soldier, and a forgotten weapon from the days of JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis. As the separate strands of the story come together, Madriani finds information that will ultimately lead him to the one person who holds the key to it all: a man some call "The Guardian of Lies".

Defense attorney Paul Madriani is embroiled in a case as perilous as any he has ever faced - one that involves an angry killer who will stop at nothing short of vengeance and two missing NASA scientists who are holding secrets that a hostile government desperately wants to purchase - in blood if they must.

Compelling Evidence Paul Madriani was once a promising associate with the prestigious Potter, Skarpellos law firm, co-founded by his mentor, Ben Potter. But after a scandalous affair with Ben's wife, Talia, Paul left the firm to begin a brilliant career as a criminal defense attorney. Ben's impeccable reputation has made him a leading candidate for the Supreme Court, until he is found dead on the eve of the nomination, and Talia becomes the prime suspect.

Paul Madriani and Harry Hinds have a new client: Emma Brauer, a woman accused in the "mercy killing" of her aged father, Robert Brauer. Insisting she's innocent, Emma tells Paul about a package sent to her father shortly before he entered the hospital. Bequeathed to him by a member of his unit from World War II, the box contains a key and a slip of paper. Emma fears that this package is connected to her father's death.

The Old Weatherman dreams of a plan that could be his swansong, an attack to drive a stake through the heart of the right wing establishment and bury it for good. Now he’s found the money, the ideal weapon, and the professional who knows how to use it. And he has put his sights on the perfect target at the very seat of the United States government, in the heart of downtown Washington. It will be a strike heard round the world.

One of the most successful lawyers in the country, Olinda Serna, is a master at managing money as well as her influential clients. After years of fierce combat in the political trenches, Serna knows all the dirty secrets, where the bodies are buried, and how deeply they are stacked. When she's killed in a roadside crash in the high desert of Southern California, powerful heads in Washington begin to panic, worried that their secrets may not be safe anymore.

Paul Madriani has ample reason to suspect he's representing a guilty man. Dr. David Crone, a respected medical researcher and principal in mapping the human genome, is charged with the murder of a young colleague: 26-year-old Kalista Jordan, an African-American research physician whose body washed up on a beach in San Diego Bay. Forensic evidence links her murder with material in Crone's garage.

After a lawyer friend is killed along with his client in a hail of gunfire outside the federal courthouse in San Diego, Madriani takes on another client who he believes is involved at the edges of the double murder. He takes the case not to defend the man, but to find out who killed his friend and why. Madriani is tortured by questions of conflict, his duty to a client who may have killed his friend, and the need to know the truth, wondering whether he himself had been marked for death only to have a friend die in his place.

In a period of five days, the rural college town of Davenport, California, has been rocked by two sets of brutal double murders. When another set of bodies is found, Paul Madriani, special prosecutor, must find the killer...and quickly. Physical and trace evidence lead to the arraignment of a college security guard on multiple charges of murder.

Attorney Paul Madriani defends a soldier on trial for murder and unwittingly steps into a maze of secrets and lies that the government, and even his client, would rather leave undisturbed. Madriani is faced with arcane ballistics evidence, a so-called "double tap," two bullet wounds tightly grouped to a victim's head, shots that can only be made by a crack marksman.