Panther's Prey

Starred review from February 15, 2016
Fans of Scott Turow will relish Smith’s outstanding fourth Russian nesting doll of a whodunit featuring San Francisco lawyer Leo Maxwell (after 2015’s Fox Is Framed). Leo, who has left private practice to take a job in the public defender’s office, is representing Randall Rodriguez, who “has spent his adult life on the street, in mental hospitals, or in jail.” He also has a record of confessing to crimes he didn’t commit. Despite Rodriguez’s confession of rape in the present case, Leo and his hardworking cocounsel, Jordan Walker, succeed in getting the jury to acquit after providing expert testimony as to why he would admit to something he didn’t do. Leo and Jordan sleep together after the triumph, but the relationship proves short-lived. One night in bed, Jordan receives a text message and kicks Leo out. Three days later, he finds her battered corpse in her apartment, with evidence implicating Rodriguez. The plotting is impeccable, and Smith adds even more layers to his complex lead, while creating a San Francisco as morally ambiguous as Turow’s Kindle County. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents.

February 15, 2016
San Francisco public defender Leo Maxwell just can't catch a break. In fact, he can't even cut himself loose from the selfsame villains that have been dogging him through three previous cases (Fox Is Framed, 2015, etc.).The good news is that Leo and his co-counsel, Jordan Walker, have every chance of getting autistic, schizophrenic, chronic confessor Randall Rodriguez acquitted on the charge of having raped investment banker Janelle Fitzpatrick. The bad news is twofold: Rodriguez doesn't want to be acquitted--he'd get better care inside prison than outside--and a few hours after Jordan dispatches Leo from her apartment after some sex that's more than a victory round but less than true love, she's found horribly dead inside. The even worse news, at least from Leo's point of view, is that the undocumented handgun he'd been given long ago but surrendered to Jordan to dispose of turns out to be the same weapon that murdered Russell Bell in prison. Bell, you may recall, is the former cellmate planning to testify against Lawrence Maxwell, Leo's father, who was released from prison years after his conviction for killing his wife because criminal mastermind Bo Wilder hired the hit on Bell in order to put Lawrence in his debt. There's gobs of back story like this, and you need every drop to keep up with the complications Smith keeps piling on as the cops Leo savaged during the Rodriguez trial are faced with the pleasant dilemma of whether to pin Jordan's murder on him or lean on him until he tells them how he happened to be in possession of the gun whose murderous blast set his father free. Fans of this estimable series already know that Smith is much better at digging his hero into deep holes than devising plausible explanations for his often dumb behavior or providing clues to the real killer. Newcomers are advised to hang on for one wild ride.

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February 15, 2016
The fourth Leo Maxwell legal thriller starts on a high note: Maxwell and his partner at the San Francisco public defender's office, Jordan Walker, secure an acquittal for an accused rapist, Randall Rodriguez, a man whose history of confessing to crimes he didn't commit convinced Leo and Jordan that he was innocent. Soon after, though, Jordan is raped and murdered, and Rodriguez confesses to the crime. Leo believes he's innocent again, but his bosses order him not to assist in the man's defense. Leo takes a leave of absence, vowing to pursue the investigation on his own time; he has his own theory about Jordan's murder, but can he prove it? Or will Leo himself wind up fingered for the crime? Gripping, dramatically written, and very suspenseful, this novel will have strong appeal for legal-thriller fans, especially followers of John Lescroart's Dismas Hardy series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)