Kate Wilhelm
Since he is poised to desecrate...
2) No defense
Lara and Vinny Jessup had a lovely May-December marriage. Initially, the sheriff in Loomis County thinks that Vinny died when his car rolled over on a bad curve on Lookout Mountain. Then he finds the gunshot wound. Was it suicide or was it murder? With a large insurance policy as her motive, Lara could have staged the death—or so it appears to the sheriff. Barbara Holloway finds herself drawn to the Oregon desert to take on this case. But
...3) Cold case
The large retainer offered by a client who asks for complete anonymity is not the only thing that intrigues Barbara Holloway. The defendant, Carol Fredricks, is a gifted young pianist charged with killing the manager of a piano bar. But Carol is as much of a mystery...
Gregarious Vegas entertainer Wally Lederer has a lucrative showbiz career, but when a childhood friend accuses him of stealing a valuable artifact, his checkered past comes back to haunt him. Wally claims he's turned his life around since spending time in the slammer for picking pockets, but will the police believe him? More important, does Barbara believe him when he pleads his case to her?
Wally swears he's innocent. But when his accuser
...Long regarded as "one of the masters of psychological fiction in America" (San Francisco Chronicle), Kate Wilhelm delivers one of her most probing—and most suspenseful—novels in The Deepest Water. Abby Connor's father, Jud, was a novelist whose career finally took off after three novels and years of hard work. Jud was also the most important man in Abby's life, to the chagrin of her husband, Brice. When Jud is murdered in his Oregon
...Barbara Holloway has a reputation for taking on the toughest cases—and winning them. The trial involves the murder of Gus Marchand, a hard-working, God-fearing man who was found dead on his kitchen floor. Without any real evidence linking him to the crime, the locals cast their suspicions toward Alex Feldman, Marchand's hideously deformed neighbor. At the request of a fellow attorney, Barbara agrees to defend him. But another suspect is the
...Barbara's peace at her retreat on the Oregon coast is shattered when a terrified young boy leads her to a cabin in the woods where his battered mother has clearly been left for dead. Barbara runs for help, but by the time she returns both mother and son are gone.
The puzzle deepens when...
Mitch Arno always meant bad news for Folsum, Oregon. When they ran him out of town seventeen years ago, he left behind a wife with two daughters and a family that never wanted to see him again. When he returns, he brings trouble in the form of a lot of suspicious money. As Barbara attempts to counsel Mitch's wife about the money, a second form of trouble arrives, Mitch's corpse.
11) The Dark Door
Charlie Meiklejohn and Constance Leidl probe a mystery whose origins lie beyond the Earth. A series of arson attacks—seemingly unrelated—are destroying old empty buildings across the country, and costing insurance companies dearly. The problem proves not so much to trace the perpetrator, but to understand and prevent the phenomenon which he has been tracking and trying to stamp out for five years: a series of outbreaks of sudden, murderous
...13) Heaven is high
14) The best defense
Kate Wilhelm returns to the marvelous milieu of Death Qualified with this page-turning legal thriller.
The neighborhood in Eugene, Oregon, is blue-collar; the cafe holds only three tables and four booths. But it's the only place attorney Barbara Holloway feels both productive and peaceful. Laptop computer on the table, coffee refilled regularly by the cook, Barbara gets her work done and wants for nothing more—certainly not another
...16) The Hamlet trap
Roman Cavanaugh runs a small theater company in Ashland, Oregon, one that has gained a nation-wide reputation. When a new director comes to town, bringing with him an eccentric playwright, jealousies arise and tempers flare; suddenly a man is found murdered. Ro's niece, Ginnie, is accused, and private investigators Charlie Meiklejohn and his wife, Constance Leidl, are called in to clear his name. They uncover a trail of secrets that threaten to
...18) Smart house
20) Malice prepense
Forget about Grisham, Turow, and all those other scribbling ex-lawyers. The best writer of legal mysteries working today is Kate Wilhelm of Eugene, Oregon.
When he was a kid, Teddy Wendover had an accident that left him stunted at the mental age of eight. Physically, he's six-foot-two and twenty-eight years old, but he acts and thinks just like a little boy. Could this big little boy be a killer?
Someone has murdered one of Oregon's
...