The Crooked Angel

Brian Dunn killed his wife with a deer rifle in the basement of their home. The police thought it was an accident. But was it?

Brian remarried, moved from Petoskey, Michigan downstate to Grosse Pointe and started a new family. Six years later, an ambitious prosecutor finds new evidence and hunts Brian down.

The police burst into Brian's house while he's decorating the Christmas tree with his new wife and their five-year-old daughter. They haul him away and charge him with first-degree murder.

Burr Lafayette, the deposed head of a major Detroit law firm, is recruited by his beautiful ex-girlfriend to defend Brian. A man at loose ends, Burr prefers dogs, boats, women and wine to clients and courtrooms. But he's a brilliant litigator.

He discovers there are more secrets than Brian ever let on. Just as he's about to solve the murder, Burr's own life is threatened.

A legal thriller with larger-than-life characters and a town too small for its secrets, The Crooked Angel is Steve Hamilton's A Cold Day in Paradise and Scott Turow's Presumed Innocent rolled into one.

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Critics call Cutter’s books “pure Michigan.”

"Cutter’s narrative maintains a relentless edge while an unsettling ambiguity hangs over everything. Another superb installment in this legal thriller series."
—Kirkus Reviews

The Crooked Angel is the fourth book in the award-winning Burr Lafayette mystery series.

Charles Cutter is the author of the highly acclaimed five-book Burr Lafayette legal thriller series. The Pink Pony, the first book in the series won first prize in the Global Book Awards. Cutter is a cum laude graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and a graduate with highest honors from Michigan State University. Before his writing career, he was in the media business and was a practicing attorney.

Cutter is active in conservation, most recently serving as chairman of the board for Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, the largest upland conservation organization in the United States. He lives with his wife, two dogs and four cats in East Lansing. He has a leaky sailboat in Harbor Springs, and a leakier duck boat on Saginaw Bay. He is currently at work on the next book in the Burr Lafayette series.