Noble Chase

February 15, 2016
Rudolph, a retired Park Avenue attorney and accomplished sailor, makes his fiction debut with this fast-paced, if uneven, legal thriller. After winning a $105 million judgment for a company owned by a Taiwan-based conglomerate, 27-year-old attorney Elisabeth Swahn, an associate at the Manhattan law firm of Wilcox, Swahn and Giles, realizes that her client, Leonard Sloane, has stolen $70 million before apparently dying in a yachting accident near Puerto Rico. When Beth’s stepfather, a retired senior partner at her firm who’s now living on a sailboat in the Caribbean with her mother, uncovers clues that may point to a conspiracy involving Sloane’s death, Beth embarks on a dangerous journey with her parents to track him down and save her career. The dynamic between Beth and her stepfather is an undeniable strength as is the authenticity of the legal and nautical backdrop, but a cardboard villain coupled with an anticlimactic ending will disappoint some readers. Agent: Mel Berger, William Morris Endeavor.

Starred review from February 15, 2016
A fast-moving legal thriller that's resolved on the high seas instead of in a courtroom. Near Puerto Rico, the sloop Satin Lady calls in a mayday. The Coast Guard finds its wreck but no survivors. Len Sloane and Erica Crossland had been onboard and are presumed dead. Meanwhile, Beth Swahn, an intensely competitive young attorney working in her retired stepfather's law firm, has dinner with Chun Keun "C.K." Leung, a wealthy Taiwanese client, to celebrate winning a big case. But she realizes that C.K. thinks his firm won only $35 million and isn't aware that they also received $70 million in punitive damages. As obligated, she sets him straight. At first, C.K. brushes it off as a likely bookkeeping error. Beth suspects that Sloane, C.K.'s deceased business associate, did not properly transfer the money but had ripped him off instead. She tells her boss she might be left "holding the bag" for a possible malpractice suit. Indeed, C.K. gives Beth's firm two months to recover the missing money or be sued. Beth doesn't trust her client at all: "Secrecy and surprise were his modus operandi," and "truth was irrelevant." Conducting her own investigation, she begins to think Sloane may still be alive. She meets Sloane's estranged son, Bob Talcourt, who seems like a decent man. The story is fun from the start, yet there's no real action until an 18-wheeler runs Beth and her companions off the road nearly halfway into the book. Then she fights off muggers, and Talcourt's apartment is trashed. The case races to an out-of-court settlement as Beth, her mother, and stepfather sail their boat, Red Sky, across the Caribbean to catch the sloop Atrophy on its attempted escape to Panama. Stormy weather and entertaining sailing scenes follow in their wake. A dandy debut novel featuring lawyers with both integrity and nautical skills.

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March 1, 2016
Beth Swahn has won her first big settlement for her client, Leonard Sloane, to the tune of more than $100 million. But when Sloane's boss, C. J. Leung, flies in from China to take her out to celebrate, she realizes that something is very wrong. He is under the impression that the settlement was just $30 million. Sloane has disappeared along with his banker girlfriend and the rest of the money. After a frantic Mayday call, both are presumed dead when their yacht supposedly sinks. Furious and embarrassed, Beth is determined to find the money; she ends up working with Sloane's son but isn't at all sure he can be trusted, despite their mutual attraction. Meanwhile, the law firm may be on the hook for the money. International money laundering, corruption, violence, and a horrific tropical storm all combine to make this a breathless race to the finish lineand the cash. The John Grisham and Scott Turow crowd will be satisfied.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)