From the Grave

March 26, 2018
Implausibilities undermine this series kickoff from Edgar-finalist Brandon (Running with the Dead). During a trial, Edward Hall, a well-known Houston defense attorney, and Cynthia Miles, the prosecutor he’s trying a drug case against, help themselves to the cocaine in evidence before engaging in intercourse in the judge’s chambers. When these shenanigans become known, Edward covers for Cynthia and takes the rap for the evidence tampering. After two years in prison, the disbarred lawyer finds steady work as a salesman, until he gets a desperate call from his physician sister, Amy, who has been arrested for murdering her estranged husband. The prosecution is convinced of Amy’s guilt—she was found, bloodstained, next to the corpse—but despite his disbarment, Edward agrees to defend her, only to find that Cynthia, now a judge, will preside over the high-profile murder trial. No one in authority realizes that Edward no longer has a license to practice law as he seeks to prove his sister’s innocence. Brandon, a Texas criminal lawyer, knows how to ratchet up tension in the courtroom, but multiple contrivances don’t bode well for future entries.

January 1, 2020
Donald Willis, "the most hated man in Houston," is presumed guilty. Out of prison after being convicted of kidnapping, he looks the perfect fit for [attempting?] another kidnapping. This time the victim is Houston society belle Diana Greene, who tells quite a story. Donald grabbed her outside a drug store, she says, put a bag over her head, drove her to a deserted house, and held her for ransom. She escaped. Donald's luck bottoms: Diana is the sister of the Houston district attorney. All this is the starter motor for disbarred lawyer Edward Hall's attempt to get back in the game. It can happen, the DA says, if Hall agrees to defend Donald, implying that he'd be smart to lose. Instead, Hall puts up a ferocious fight and uncovers a possibly murderous scheme. The pace is brisk and the writing elegant: a cop is a short man "who made up for that by living at the gym." Fans of legal thrillers should give this priority.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

April 1, 2018
A fine, tense legal thriller with an offbeat plot. Edward Hall, Houston prosecuting attorney, spends time in jail for the damnedest reason: he's caught breaking into a druggie's cocaine stash. Upon his release, his sister, Amy, is arrested for murdering her estranged husband; too bad for her, the man made a video days before his death, saying, If I am found dead, it will be my wife who murdered me. Pretty ironclad. Edward, though he has no legal cred any more, undertakes Amy's defense. Interestingly, author Brandon, a practicing attorney, has the urge to tell us trade secrets, and these sections are as intriguing as the narrative. We learn that cops have a way of manipulating eyewitness accounts to jibe with their version. Defense attorneys like to put their second-best witness on first and their best witness on last. Juries secretly believe the person in the dock is guilty; that's why not guilty verdicts are in the minority. And those Perry Mason dramas that have the lawyer freeing the innocent by solving the crime himself? They're all bullshit, Edward tells Amy. Well, not always, as we learn.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

November 11, 2019
Edgar-finalist Brandon’s lame sequel to 2018’s Against the Law, which introduced Houston attorney Edward Hall, who lost his law license and did time after burglarizing a judge’s chamber to steal cocaine, offers more improbabilities. Donald Willis, who recently finished a prison sentence for kidnapping a football star’s child, stands accused of abducting socialite Diana Greene, who told the SWAT team that rescued her that Willis had forced her to come with him to an abandoned shack. Since Greene’s sister, Julia Lipscomb, is the district attorney for Houston, Lipscomb recuses herself, but only after arranging for Hall to represent Willis. Despite being disbarred, Hall is allowed by the State Bar to act as defense counsel. Hall finds his client’s story—that Greene’s husband hired him as a bodyguard for her—unconvincing, but pursues a vigorous defense nonetheless. Unmemorable prose and characters only reinforce the unreality. Nothing in the courtroom scenes will make the reader forget Scott Turow.

November 1, 2019
A disbarred Houston attorney is offered one more chance at the gold ring if only he can manage to lose the case that's his ticket back. And it looks like an easy case to lose. Donald Willis, whom the police caught inside a house in which socialite Diana Greene says she was held against her will, has already served eight years for kidnapping a football player's son. He's eager to have Edward Hall, whose performance in that earlier case he believes won him a light sentence, represent him again. Even though Edward has since lost his license over his defense of his sister on a murder charge (Against the Law, 2018), Harris County D.A. Julia Lipscomb makes him an offer he can't refuse--to reinstate his credentials for this one trial, with a more definitive return contingent on his performance. And Edward knows exactly what kind of performance the district attorney, who just happens to be Diana's sister, would like him to give: One that ends in resounding failure. The case seems so hopeless that losing it should be a cinch. Donald's story that Diana's husband, wealthy River Oaks developer Sterling Greene, had hired him to serve as a bodyguard for his wife's trip to a dubious neighborhood to pick up some equally questionable jewels sounds weak from top to bottom, and the evidence against Donald can be measured in tons. Edward's only hope seems to be to tie the alleged abduction to another possible crime that very day: the fatal shooting of Antonio Alberico, the painter who'd recently completed a portrait of Diana Greene. Putting together the pieces, a task so difficult for Edward, should require considerably less effort from most readers, who are well advised to stay the course anyway for a satisfying double twist at the very end. Highly accomplished midgrade work from a pro.

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