HABEAS CORPUS

Charlie Trust is sick of being a lawyer, and he never wants to see another case. There's only one client he can't refuse. And that client just might be a killer. In Malibu, everyone is watching, but nobody is telling the truth.


Los Angeles, 1992

Charlie Trust is a Budweiser kind of guy living in a champagne world. After grinding away his soul as a divorce attorney in Virginia, he's found the ultimate escape: a borrowed house on Malibu's exclusive Carbon Beach. His plan is simple. Drink beer, drive his cherry-red '69 Mustang, watch the Pacific Ocean, and figure out what to do with the rest of his life. He has no clients, no office, and absolutely no desire ever to practice law again.

Then the riots tear through Los Angeles, and America's paradise turns to ashes. The fires are still burning in Hollywood when Charlie's neighbor comes knocking and brings a different kind of disaster to his door.

Martin Cole, Detective Harry Murphy on one of TV's hottest cop shows, is a familiar face to most Americans. He's also a man whose wife has gone missing, and two hotshot detectives from LAPD's Robbery-Homicide Division don't think she walked away. They think Marty Cole killed her.

Marty pleads with Charlie to help him, and Charlie can't say no.

Caught between calculating detectives, ruthless Hollywood lawyers, and his own client's deviousness, Charlie Trust learns that friendship can be the most dangerous weapon of all. On Carbon Beach, where multimillion-dollar houses stand watch over the relentless surf, everyone has secrets worth killing for.

Atmospheric, sharp, and relentless, this is the story of a man who tried to walk away from the law, only to find it waiting for him in the California sun.


HABEAS CORPUS is set against the backdrop of Malibu in the uneasy spring of 1992. It is the haunting first installment of the Charlie Trust novels, a series that blends legal intrigue with California noir for fans of writers like Michael Connelly and Robert Crais.

"Wow! This novel is the best legal thriller that I have read in years. It's right up there with PRESUMED INNOCENT." -- Angela Norton, retired Texas prosecutor