Panther's Prey: A Leo Maxwell Mystery (Leo Maxwell Mystery, 4) - Hardcover

Smith, Lachlan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802125034 ISBN 13: 9780802125033

Publisher: Mysterious Press, 2016

Synopsis

In Panther's Prey, the latest novel from Shamus Award winner Lachlan Smith, tragedy once again strikes near the heart for lawyer-detective Leo Maxwell.

After working to free his father from prison in Fox Is Framed, Leo has now left private practice and is working as a public defender in San Francisco. He and his co-counsel Jordan Walker are in the midst of trial, brilliantly defending Randall Rodriguez, a mentally ill homeless man whom they contend falsely confessed to the rape of a young San Francisco socialite. After their client is acquitted, Leo and Jordan fall into an intense relationship--until Jordan is found brutally raped and murdered in her apartment. Leo, the last person known to have seen her alive, is the natural suspect, and the police are eager for payback after the Rodriguez case. The story takes a shocking turn when Leo and Jordan's freshly acquitted client walks into the police station and offers to confess to Jordan's murder. Upset by the rapidity with which the authorities accept this all-too-convenient confession, Jordan's grieving father tasks Leo with investigating his daughter's death. Leo agrees, though he knows exonerating Rodriguez will likely bring suspicion back on himself.

Theorizing that he may be on the trail of a serial rapist and murderer, Leo instead uncovers a massive judicial fraud leading to the steps of the federal courthouse. In an explosive final confrontation, Leo will come face to face with an adversary far more powerful than any foe he has met thus far.

About this title

About the Author

Lachlan Smith was a Richard Scowcroft Fellow in the Stegner Program at Stanford and received an MFA from Cornell. He has written three previous books in the Leo Maxwell Mystery series: Bear Is Broken, which won the 2014 Shamus Award for Best First PI Novel, Lion Plays Rough, and Fox Is Framed. Smith's fiction has also appeared in the Best New American Voices series. In addition to writing novels, he is an attorney practicing in the area of civil rights and employment law. He lives in Alabama.

Review

"Fans of Scott Turow will relish Smith's outstanding fourth Russian nesting doll of a whodunit featuring San Francisco lawyer Leo Maxwell...The plotting is impeccable, and Smith adds even more layers to his complex lead, while creating a San Francisco as morally ambiguous as Turow's Kindle County." --Publisher's Weekly (Starred Review).  "The fourth Leo Maxwell legal thriller starts on a high note... Gripping, dramatically written, and very suspenseful, this novel will have strong appeal for legal-thriller fans." --Booklist

An "estimable series ... Newcomers are advised to hang on for one wild ride." -- Kirkus Reviews on Panther's Prey.

"Some of the sharpest courtroom cut-and-thrust since Presumed Innocent." --Kirkus Reviews on Fox Is Framed.  "Lachlan Smith does a masterful turn in Fox Is Framed. A sharp-edged legal thriller with the deep emotional undertones of family drama and tragedy."--Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times bestselling author of Robert B. Parker's Blind Spot, on Fox Is Framed.

"This book never took me where I expected it would. The story is smart, complex, and original . . . The characters got me hooked, the legal story got me to stay, and the originality of the telling stuck with me when I was finished."--Mystery Scene on Fox Is Framed

"The complex family dynamics that Smith explored in his earlier books only become more intriguing in his superlative third Leo Maxwell mystery . . . Smith is masterly in creating realistic courtroom scenes, including the subtleties of witness examination, and, even more impressively, enhances the trial with the human drama of the Smith family."--Publishers Weekly on Fox Is Framed (boxed and starred review)

"Engaging . . . Smith elegantly blends courtroom suspense and family misfortune without ever slipping into melodrama; the line Maxwell family members walk between innocence and guilt becomes more blurred with every step and turn of the page."--Library Journal on Fox is Framed (starred review)

About this edition

• Publisher: Mysterious Press
• Publication date: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0802125034
• ISBN 13: 9780802125033
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 256