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Summary
Summary
"Cruel Justice is one of the best books in William Bernhardt's excellent Ben Kincaid series. It is a thoroughly entertaining page-turner. The perfect fast read." --Phillip Margolin Oklahoma lawyer Ben Kincaid, the hero of William Bernhardt's bestselling legal thrillers, returns--and this time his crusade for justice places him on a collision course with a malevolent mastermind. Ten years ago, Leeman Hayes, a black teenager, was accused of brutally beating a young woman with a golf club at a posh country club in Tulsa. Kinks in the legal system have kept Leeman locked up without a verdict for a decade. Now the case is finally going back to court, and Ben Kincaid has stumbled into the job of defense attorney. But what possible chance does he stand against Tulsa's crack prosecutor, Jack Bullock? Nothing short of a miracle is going to save Leeman Hayes from the death sentence. As Kincaid struggles to pull together a defense, another young boy is falling into the clutches of a child molester. Ten-year-old Abie Rutherford is the perfect victim--comely and acquiescent, miserably lonely and desperate for approval. Abie thinks the handsome, smiling stranger in the baseball cap might be that friend he has longed for. When Abie Rutherford vanishes without a trace one hot summer day, Ben Kincaid, like everyone else in Tulsa, fears the worst. Then a bone-chilling discovery compels Ben to forge a link between the missing boy and the seemingly hopeless case of Leeman Hayes--thereby igniting the fuse for the most explosive courtroom case of Ben's career. With Cruel Justice, William Bernhardt delivers an absolute spellbinder, a novel that confirms his status within the top ranks of courtroom novelists. Make no mistake about it: this is Bernhardt's best yet.
Author Notes
William Bernhardt is the author of many books, including Primary Justice, Double Jeopardy, Silent Justice, Murder One, Criminal Intent, and Death Row. He has twice won the Oklahoma Book Award for Best Fiction, and in 2000 he was presented the H. Louise Cobb Distinguished Author Award "in recognition of an outstanding body of work in which we understand ourselves and American society at large."
A former trial attorney, Bernhardt has received several awards for his public service.
He lives in Tulsa with his children, Harry, Alice, and Ralph. (Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Kirkus Review
How can hopeless-cause Tulsa lawyer Ben Kincaid top his defense of a white supremacist accused of murder (Perfect Justice, 1994)? By defending a retarded black man of a murder that he allegedly committed ten years ago. Back in those days, Leeman Hayes was the caddy--Utica Greens Country Club's gesture to affirmative action--found on the scene (his own caddyshack) when the police discovered the beaten, impaled body of Maria Alvarez. Judged incompetent to assist in his own defense, Leeman has been languishing in institutions for a decade, until a convenient expert pronounces his inability to string together a spoken sentence no barrier to his trial, and the hounds are at the hunt. It's a typical case for poverty-row Kincaid, who's opposed by his sanctimonious old mentor Jack Bullock (``You need a lesson in the difference between right and wrong'') in a courtroom presided over by lazy, incompetent Judge ``Hang `em High'' Hawkins. Looks like there's no hope for Leeman- -unless Carlee Crane, a onetime cleaner at Utica Greens, can recover the eyewitness memories of the killing she's repressed, unless she can bring herself to testify, unless Bullock's sneaky attempts to discredit her are derailed, unless Kincaid can extort a confession from the real killer. Meanwhile, Kincaid's former brother-in-law Lt. Mike Morelli is on a hunt of his own for a murderous pedophile who's gotten interested in ten-year-old Abie Rutherford--and who gets even more interested after Abie becomes the only possible witness who could identify him. Bernhardt skillfully uses the child-molesting plot, and Kincaid's own consternation at having his decamped sister's baby dumped in his arms, to offset the longueurs of the ancient Alvarez case, and it's no surprise when the two cases finally grow together in a clever twist. The real mystery here, though, is how Kincaid, who wins every hot-button case he lands, can persist as such a sincere, blustering tyro in the courtroom. He must be the luckiest lawyer in fiction. (Author tour)
Booklist Review
Here Bernhardt reintroduces attorney Ben Kinkaid, absent from his previous book, Double Jeopardy , to star in another superb legal thriller. Bernhardt is expert at maintaining a keep-'em-guessin' quality as Kinkaid, a lawyer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, becomes involved in a an old murder case: a woman was found impaled by a golf club in the country-club caddy shack. One of the caddies was incarcerated, but because of problems stemming from his limited mental faculties, he is being brought to trial 10 years after the murder occurred. Kinkaid reluctantly takes the case, for a voice keeps telling him he needs to pursue a practice loftier than representing "hard-luck stories." Meanwhile, a rash of child molestation and murder has thrown the city into a panic. Twists and turns and several subplots only add to the deliciousness of the complicated story line as Kinkaid unearths connections between Tulsa's upper crust and the city's drug-dealing underworld. Those very connections eventually answer the question of who really was the golf club-wielding murderer. Wonderfully diverting reading. (Reviewed Oct. 15, 1995)0345386841Brad Hooper
Library Journal Review
In this latest from the best-selling author of Perfect Justice (Ballantine, 1993), attorney Ben Kincaid takes on Tulsa's most wealthy residents. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
