Blood Flag

March 21, 2016
Bestseller Martini’s uneven 14th novel featuring California lawyers Paul Madriani and Harry Hinds (after 2015’s The Enemy Inside) finds Paul and Harry flush with cash after sharing in the windfall from a whistle-blower who helped the feds nail some offshore tax cheats. Their bank balance enables them to take on a new client with a limited ability to pay, Emma Brauer, who is suspected of euthanizing her ailing 89-year-old father, Robert. Some months earlier, Robert became agitated when he received a safe-deposit box key in the mail, along with a paper that may have been a military ID. Some disturbing phone calls later prompted him to ask Emma to take the items out of the house. Right after she did, a burglar tore the place apart. Emma’s arrest leads to further tragedy. That Robert’s death has international implications raises the stakes, but the growing implausibility of the plot comes as a letdown after the book’s powerful opening sections. Agent: Esther Newberg, ICM.

December 1, 2015

Defending a woman accused of a mercy killing, Paul Madriani discovers that her father had received a package shortly before being hospitalized hinting at a Nazi relic called the Blood Flag that disappeared at war's end. What's more, others in his unit have met suspicious deaths. With a 150,000-copy first printing.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2016
In the latest Paul Madriani novel, Paul and his partner, Harry Hinds, take on the case of an elderly woman who's accused of killing her father. Emma Brauer spins an arresting story: her father recently received a parcel in the mail, sent to him by a man he served with in WWI, and Emma believes the contents of the package are responsible for his death. It seems an impossible-to-prove proposition, even if it's true, but when Paul's assistant is murdered, he begins to think Emma's story might not be so improbable after all. As he digs deeper, he uncovers a conspiracy that reaches back into history and involves, apparently, multiple homicides in the present day. Tightly constructed and efficiently written in the manner of the other entrees in this long-running series, this one sticks tightly to a proven formula, but that won't bother series fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)