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Everybody is guilty, but some people are more guilty than others.
Los Angeles, 1995
In 1995, LA was the three-ring circus of Hollywood criminal law. Heidi Fleiss, the Hollywood Madam, was convicted in January of pandering and sentenced to three years in prison. The retrial of the Menendez brothers for the murder of their parents in Beverly Hills was scheduled to begin in August, and the media buildup was already beginning.
And then, of course, there was the eight-hundred-pound gorilla of 1995. From January through October, the O. J. Simpson trial was televised live by Court TV, and nobody in LA talked about much of anything else.
When people weren’t actually watching the Simpson trial on TV, they were watching one of the dozens of interview shows that had sprouted up on cable television to talk about it. None of those shows was bigger than Larry King's, and Charlie had been invited on a few times, but he had always politely refused. Then suddenly Charlie finds himself living in an entirely unexpected world, and he reconsiders.
Sandy Bouchier, his much older partner, suffers a mild stroke in his office, and Charlie is forced to take a hard look at the future of their law firm. Sandy has a towering public profile. Charlie has almost none. That's one reason Sandy nudges Charlie to say yes to Larry King. If Charlie goes on television as one of the commentators on the O. J. Simpson trial, he can build up his own public profile as insurance against the day that Sandy is no longer around to be the firm’s big attraction.
To Charlie’s amazement, and not a little embarrassment, he becomes an overnight media sensation, and his sudden notoriety brings a flood of new clients to Bouchier & Trust. The firm has to expand to cope with all the business Charlie is bringing in, and it struggles to build up the infrastructure it needs. Charlie’s life is being consumed by running the firm, not by practicing law, and he’s not very happy about that.
Then Charlie’s life gets even more complicated when he is plunged into defending another Hollywood murder case, one almost as big as O.J. Simpson. Diana Marsh shot Laslo Scartish, an Oscar-nominated film director. That’s not in dispute. What is in dispute is why she did it. The prosecutor says she shot Scartish in a jealous rage. Diana says Scartish threatened her with a gun, the one she used to shoot him, and that he tried to rape her.
Diana asks Charlie to represent her. In normal times, he knows, a case like this would be one the media would follow obsessively, but 1995 isn't a normal time. It's OJ time, and OJ is drowning out everything else. That's just fine with Charlie. He'd rather be a working trial lawyer than a media celebrity any day, and defending Diane Marsh is his chance to get back to that.
But here’s the thing. There’s something funky about the Diane Marsh case, and Charlie can’t quite put his finger on it. He believes what Diane has told him, but he doesn’t believe she’s told him everything. Is the missing part of her story something Charlie needs to know, or something he would be better off not knowing? And does he really want to find out?
In Hollywood, the biggest crime isn't murder. The biggest crime is getting caught.
For fans of Michael Connelly's Lincoln Lawyer series and John Grisham's legal thrillers comes a fresh voice in courtroom drama, set against the sun-soaked darkness of 1990s Los Angeles.
Genre: Mystery
Los Angeles, 1995
In 1995, LA was the three-ring circus of Hollywood criminal law. Heidi Fleiss, the Hollywood Madam, was convicted in January of pandering and sentenced to three years in prison. The retrial of the Menendez brothers for the murder of their parents in Beverly Hills was scheduled to begin in August, and the media buildup was already beginning.
And then, of course, there was the eight-hundred-pound gorilla of 1995. From January through October, the O. J. Simpson trial was televised live by Court TV, and nobody in LA talked about much of anything else.
When people weren’t actually watching the Simpson trial on TV, they were watching one of the dozens of interview shows that had sprouted up on cable television to talk about it. None of those shows was bigger than Larry King's, and Charlie had been invited on a few times, but he had always politely refused. Then suddenly Charlie finds himself living in an entirely unexpected world, and he reconsiders.
Sandy Bouchier, his much older partner, suffers a mild stroke in his office, and Charlie is forced to take a hard look at the future of their law firm. Sandy has a towering public profile. Charlie has almost none. That's one reason Sandy nudges Charlie to say yes to Larry King. If Charlie goes on television as one of the commentators on the O. J. Simpson trial, he can build up his own public profile as insurance against the day that Sandy is no longer around to be the firm’s big attraction.
To Charlie’s amazement, and not a little embarrassment, he becomes an overnight media sensation, and his sudden notoriety brings a flood of new clients to Bouchier & Trust. The firm has to expand to cope with all the business Charlie is bringing in, and it struggles to build up the infrastructure it needs. Charlie’s life is being consumed by running the firm, not by practicing law, and he’s not very happy about that.
Then Charlie’s life gets even more complicated when he is plunged into defending another Hollywood murder case, one almost as big as O.J. Simpson. Diana Marsh shot Laslo Scartish, an Oscar-nominated film director. That’s not in dispute. What is in dispute is why she did it. The prosecutor says she shot Scartish in a jealous rage. Diana says Scartish threatened her with a gun, the one she used to shoot him, and that he tried to rape her.
Diana asks Charlie to represent her. In normal times, he knows, a case like this would be one the media would follow obsessively, but 1995 isn't a normal time. It's OJ time, and OJ is drowning out everything else. That's just fine with Charlie. He'd rather be a working trial lawyer than a media celebrity any day, and defending Diane Marsh is his chance to get back to that.
But here’s the thing. There’s something funky about the Diane Marsh case, and Charlie can’t quite put his finger on it. He believes what Diane has told him, but he doesn’t believe she’s told him everything. Is the missing part of her story something Charlie needs to know, or something he would be better off not knowing? And does he really want to find out?
In Hollywood, the biggest crime isn't murder. The biggest crime is getting caught.
For fans of Michael Connelly's Lincoln Lawyer series and John Grisham's legal thrillers comes a fresh voice in courtroom drama, set against the sun-soaked darkness of 1990s Los Angeles.
Genre: Mystery
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