Dirty White Collar Format: Paperback

A fast-paced, shocking legal thriller. The world of international crime, drugs, and money laundering forms the backdrop to Dirty White Collar, a thriller that begins in a medium-security prison near Toronto and ends in Providenciales, the exotic Caribbean hideaway as famous for its secretive offshore financial institutions as its spectacular beaches. Jerome Wyndham, a prominent criminal lawyer, has traded his profession, reputation, marriage, and friends for a relentless refusal to believe that his only daughter was a drug addict who died of a self-administered overdose. His obsession lands him in prison, where he meets Dirk Mueller, a Colombian drug lord whose lengthy sentence has separated him from his family. In their isolation, the two men, so disparate in background and outlook, forge a relationship rooted in the love of their children. With the unwitting assistance of Adam Portland, the police officer who arrested Wyndham, and Buddy Ladner, a reporter who has been following Jerome’s story, Jerome finds himself back on the street with Dirk. As their well laid plans to resolve their personal mysteries unravel in death, deceit, denial, and desecration, Jerome begins to question the obsessions that have driven his life — until the thrilling climax gives them renewed meaning.

A lawyer by training, Julius Melnitzer is a legal affairs journalist who spent almost two decades as an advocate in Ontario’s criminal and civil courts. He is the author of Maximum, Minimum, Medium, a true-life account of his experiences with Canada’s prison system, as well as several legal texts. His work has appeared in the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, and the Ottawa Citizen, and he writes regularly for Lexpert Magazine, and Law Times. Mr. Melnitzer lives in Toronto, where he is working on his second novel in between stints as a form of galley slave to his granddaughter.