Spotlight on:   Legal Thrillers

A few years ago when Susan Wolfe’s The Last Billable Hour won an Edgar, I realized that the Legal Thriller had a stepchild, the Legal Loser.   There is a sub-sub-genre of really delightful books that revolve around the need for legal incompetence—cases that are supposed to be lost, but aren’t.

There is a short story I remember vividly from grade school, alas without title nor author, where a young soldier in WWII is chosen for a special mission.  He is sent through enemy lines to deliver information about an imminent attack.  He doesn’t know it, but his information is false and he was chosen as the most likely to break under enemy interrogation.  Of course he fouls everything up by being brave and never spilling the beans.

A couple of books you might have missed are Terry Lewis’ very nice debut mystery Conflict of Interest and William Lashner’s Hostile Witness. Both of these, like Last Billable Hour revolve around a loser of a lawyer, at the bottom of both his professional and personal lives, who has been chosen to lose a case.  In Terry Lewis' case he’s been chosen to take the fall for the crime.

Lashner’s lawyer is a sad sack chosen by the mob as a "silent mouthpiece".  He will get a nice payoff if he says nothing on behalf of his client who is set up to take the fall for his boss.  His biggest challenge is trying to make his client realize what is going on, once he realizes it himself. Hostile Witness liner notes mention a sequel but his next book Veritas was not, and wasn’t as well written.

There are more books on this theme and we’d appreciate input from the public towards compiling a list of them.