No sooner does Patricia Egan, an idealistic young lawyer, embark on a promising legal career with a boutique southern law firm than the firm breaks up and she finds herself in a supporting role to an alcoholic senior partner representing a group of cities in a visionary alternative energy project. (It's 1980, and lines for gasoline snake around the block.) Instead of saving the country, the firm loses the client, and Patricia ends up defending a small-time safecracker and escape artist named Billy Angel, while trying to overcome the senior partner's failings and rescue the firm with the help of her associate, Jack Alexander. Patricia and Jack soon discover that some of their well-heeled clients, both former and present, are not only involved in a scheme to bilk the energy project but may also have instigated the murder of a city whistleblower--during Billy Angel's ill-fated burglary of a Taco Pal restaurant. When they become obstacles to the plot, Patricia, Jack, and Billy end up in the crosshairs of the conspirators, with deadly consequences.
Born in North Carolina, James (Jim) Garrison attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University Law School, where he was drafted into the U.S. Army after his first year. Arriving home from Vietnam on Christmas morning in 1970, he returned to Duke Law School the next month. After graduation, he set out on a first career practicing utilities law in a boutique law firm in North Carolina. That practice soon led to a few bizarre civil and criminal cases that exposed him to characters from diverse backgrounds and professions and provided fodder for The Safecracker. Seeking a calmer and less stressful environment than criminal law and jury trials, he joined Texaco Inc.'s legal department in Atlanta as a corporate attorney. When that office closed, he moved to Texaco's regional office in Houston, Texas-as a labor, benefits, and employment lawyer representing the company in various legal proceedings in Federal and state courts and agencies, as well as in labor arbitrations and other areas of legal strife. His last law position was Assistant General Counsel for regulatory matters with a Texaco/Shell/Saudi Aramco partnership. Following a corporate merger in which he was paid to go away, he started working on his first novel, QL 4, set in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War and based on his experiences there as a military policeman. First published in 2017, QL 4 has received awards for literary and military fiction and is now available as a second edition. His award-winning novel What Seems True was published in 2021and is also available in a second edition. His most recent work is Ruminations: stories, essays, and poems. His short stories and poems have appeared in online magazines and anthologies. Jim Garrison is a recovering lawyer who lives and writes in Houston, Texas.
