Randy Singer, Self-Incrimination

Randy Singer, Self-Incrimination - Trish Bannister is beaten up by her drunken, abusive husband; later she takes a sleeping pill and is passed out when her sixteen-year-old daughter Tara is also beaten up by her step-father. Unlike her mother, Tara doesn't like his abuse and admits to shooting him when the cops question her. She swears it was in self-defense because she feared for her life.

Trish hires Leslie Connors to defend her daughter who is nervous because this is her first murder case and the prosecution wants to try the teen as an adult. While she is trying to come up with Tara's defense, the scientific evidence doesn't corroborate the teenager's story. Leslie is busy making plans to marry the firm's founder Brad Carson, but puts her wedding plans on hold when she finds out she has a heart condition that needs surgery and fails to tell her beloved, driving a wedge in their relationship.

Randy Singer has written an exciting legal thriller that rivals the work of John Grisham. Readers learn how lawyers work to present a case that will exonerate their client while the defense attorney in charge of the case balances her health issues and her relationship with the man she loves. Both Brad and Leslie should be continuing characters in their own legal series if SELF-INCRIMINATION is any example.

Water Brook, May 2005, $13.99, 400 pp.

ISBN 1578567777

Harriet Klausner