Review – Dead Lawyers Tell No Tales

Landon Reed served prison time for point-shaving as a college quarterback. In prison he became a Christian, and afterwards completed law school and, after a testy hearing, was admitted to the bar. The aging, eccentric lawyer Henry McNaughten accepts Reed into his firm over the objections of the other partners. Together, McNaughten and Reed defend a former prosecutor accused of corruption and murder. Then McNaughten is murdered, and two of the other three law partners disappear when the firm’s leased jet explodes over Chesapeake Bay. Reed and the remaining partner are left to continue defense of the murder case. But someone unseen continues to threaten them and their firm, and Reed delves into McNaughten’s and the firm’s cluttered and sometimes shady past for possible clues.

Reed’s wife Kerri, a television news anchor, succeeds in interviewing secretive Sean Phoenix, who operates an international firm specializing in covert operations, often US government funded. And Phoenix begins to feed her documented stories of governmental corruption that rocket her into TV stardom. Kerri wonders where that business relationship will take her. And how it will affect her marriage to Reed.

Legal thrillers hinge on points of law, of course, and author Randy Singer provides plenty of these. But he also shows himself knowledgeable of many areas besides law, so that his novel provides much broader satisfaction than the usual legal thriller. Singer’s writing is concise and to the point, but it also deftly raises the emotional level and tension level at appropriate times. But he also proves himself a master of plotting. His narrative becomes increasingly complex and increasingly tense, with more sudden twists than a snake on a mountain railroad. And he shapes the many threads of his narrative into a fitting and unexpected climax, with a denouement that harmonizes all of the plot’s disparate elements.

All in all, this is an outstanding novel that will satisfy a broad range of readers beyond the usual legal-thriller fans.