Available:*
Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury) | FICTION BER | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Stillwater Public Library | FICTION BER | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
With his nine dazzling Ben Kincaid novels, author William Bernhardt has drawn acclaim as a master of the courtroom drama who "throws in just enough plot twists to foil most armchair detectives" (the Associated Press). Now, in Dark Justice, the winner of the Oklahoma Book Award continues to do exceptional justice to the legal thriller. Suffering from courtroom burnout, Ben Kincaid hopes to leave trials and the tribulations of a lawyer's life behind in Tulsa as he sets out for some much-needed R and R in the picturesque Pacific Northwest. But Ben's blissful getaway becomes a busman's holiday in the small town of Magic Valley, where a pitched battle between the local logging industry and crusading conservationists has led to brutal murder. Years earlier, professional activist George Zakin was successfully defended against a charge of murder by a fledgling attorney named Ben Kincaid. Now, accused of viciously killing a lumberjack, Zakin is counting on Ben to duplicate that long-ago courtroom coup and save his neck a second time. Ben has no doubt that his client is innocent, but in a town where logging is a way of life, and save-the-trees advocates are branded "eco-terrorists," he knows winning the case will be an uphill fight. It doesn't help that Ben's opponent is Rebecca Granville "Granny" Adams, a homegrown prosecutor with a reputation for being as ruthless as she is ravishing. With the odds stacked against him, Ben walks into a war zone in the courtroom . . . and a potential killing field in the streets and woods of Magic Valley, an explosive place where allies and enemies are hard to tell apart--and digging for the truth is as good as digging your grave. Laced with sly wit and loaded with surprising twists, Dark Justice makes another ironclad case for bestselling author William Bernhardt's skills as a master of the brilliantly plotted, stunningly suspenseful legal thriller.
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)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The eighth in a series of popular courtroom cliffhangers, Bernhardt's newest Ben Kincaid novel (after Extreme Justice) finds the savvy defense attorney in a tiny logging town in the Pacific Northwest. The sinister forces at work behind Magic Valley's Bunyan-esque simplicity emerge when a tree-cutter explodes in anger and kills a local lumberjackand Ben's old client, George Zakin, is suspected of the foul play. Called on to defend this man again (six years earlier Zakin had been accused and acquitted of an ecoterrorism homicide), Ben reluctantly takes the case. Ben's investigation of the other suspectsa scar-faced drug lord, the mysterious Bigfoot creature often sighted in the thick, dark woods, the leader of a covert logging consortium called "The Cabal" and many a vicious redneck snarling repetitiously about "tree-huggers"brings Ben into dangerous contact with the Magic Valley's underbelly. The sexiness of Ben's opponent, "stunning young prosecutor" "Granny" Adams, raises the courtroom stakes. But somehowperhaps because the cranky old hanging judge would rather be fishingthese scenes fail to deliver the drama they promise. Bernhardt juices the suspense with chapter-ending teasers ("The secret would have to die. With her."), but the gratuitous violence and oversimplification of the logging controversy keep the potboiler on medium-high at best. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Thrillingly interwoven plots are Bernhardt's forte, a talent he once again demonstrates full-blown in his latest superb legal thriller featuring attorney Ben Kincaid. Six years ago, Ben defended an animal-rights activist charged with murder. Zoom to the present. Ben, in Washington State on a book-signing tour, is arrested for breaking and entering as he attempts to liberate a cat whose owner has sentenced it to unnecessary euthanasia. Ben inadvertently gets involved in a group called Green Rage, a conservationist organization wrestling with the local logging industry in a life-or-death struggle. One of the members of the group has been charged with a horrible murder--and who is the alleged perp? None other than the man Ben defended six years ago. To defend him again, Ben has to go up against prosecutor Granville "Granny" Adams, who, despite her moniker, is attractive and tough as nails. She is bound and determined to win this case. In the meantime, subplots swirl and crash around Ben's feet, but these only serve to enrich the entertainment value of this wonderfully riveting read. (Reviewed October 1, 1998)0345407385Brad Hooper
Kirkus Review
Windmill-tilting Tulsa lawyer Ben Kincaid (Naked Justice, 1997, etc.), promoting his first book among the vanishing virgin forests of the Northwest, takes on a defense case as hopeless as anything back home. The prosecution--represented by smart, sexy, ambitious, unscrupulous Magic Valley D.A. Rebecca Granville ("Granny") Adams--contends that tree-hugging George Zakin hid out in the woods till he could draw a bead on logger Dwayne Gardiner, shot him through the chest, then watched as Gardiner was burned to death by a booby trap Zak had wired to the ignition of Gardiner's tree cutter. Green Rage, the environmental group Zak heads, has such a long history of quasi-terrorist activity against Gardiner's employer, WLE (We Log Everywhere) that everybody in town, most of them dependent on logging for their livelihood, is united against Green Rage, from the judge who refuses Ben's pleas for a change of venue to the witnesses Granny keeps producing out of her bottomless hat. It doesn't help matters that Ben's introduction to Magic Valley has been his own arrest for attempted catnapping (don't ask), or that six years ago he successfully defended Zak back in Tulsa on another charge of enrivo-murder, freeing him, as everybody claims, to commit this one. But the most damning facts are the ones that come out in court--facts that reveal Ben's own witnesses as liars and brand his client as a wimp who takes the Fifth even when his own lawyer calls him to the stand. The stage is set for giant-killer Ben to rout his obscenely well-financed opponents; but Bernhardt stacks the deck so guilelessly and telegraphs each punch so clearly that the environmentalists and their noble struggle inspire no more conviction than election-day slogans. Newcomers to the series, now in its eighth installment, will be impressed at how completely Ben can turn a lost case around. Series veterans will know better than to look for anything new. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
