Legacy of Lies: A Legal Thriller

Written by Robert Bailey

Narrated by Eric G. Dove

A small-town attorney takes on prejudice and corruption in this powerful legal thriller.

Small-town lawyer Bocephus Haynes comes home late one night to find District Attorney General Helen Lewis waiting for him. Her ex-husband has just been killed. She’s about to be arrested for his murder. And she wants Bo to represent her.

There’s a lot working against them. Just before his death, Helen’s ex-husband threatened to reveal a dark secret from her past. Bo has been in a tailspin since his wife’s death. What’s more, his whole life has been defined by a crime committed against his family, and he continues to face prejudice as the only African American litigator in Pulaski, Tennessee.

Bo’s back is against the wall, and Helen resigns herself to a dismal fate—but a stunning discovery throws everything into chaos. There’s a chance for justice, but to achieve it, the cost might be too much for Bo to bear.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio
• Release date: Jun 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781799759904

Robert Bailey

Robert Bailey is the bestselling and award-winning author of the McMurtrie and Drake Legal Thrillers series, which includes The Final Reckoning, The Last Trial, Between Black and White, and The Professor. Legacy of Lies is his fifth novel. For the past twenty years, Bailey has been a civil defense trial lawyer in his hometown of Huntsville, Alabama, where he lives with his wife and three children. For more information, please visit www.robertbaileybooks.com.

Reviews for Legacy of Lies

[Ryland Hawkins · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

The recording was not complete and broke up. Incomplete story.

[amaraki-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Small town southern life and lots of twists and turns towards the end of this mystery. Swift pace made this story of seemingly unassailable evidence of guilt quite the page turner. Actually the basic clue to innocence--or rather the case for an alternative suspect--should have been obvious to the defendant and her lawyer (protagonists) rather than getting it at the last minute from their deus ex machina who keeps turning up. Surprise finale though. Which again someone might have suspected from the oddity of place.

[jenniferrobb · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was my Amazon Prime free pick. I enjoyed it. As far as I remember, I haven't read anything else by this author. Since I see this is book #1 in the series, I was a bit confused by some of the reviews that refer to "previous books in the series". I do see that one reviewer said she thought it was a spin-off of another series by the author.I hadn't realized that in Tennessee the District Attorney General is referred to as "General". Since this series is supposed to center around Bocephus Haynes, I'm a bit surprised that the main character in this book is Helen Lewis rather than Bo. What Bo did to get suspended from practicing law isn't fully addressed in this novel. I do have sympathy for his character. He's lost his wife; his wife's parents, the father in particular, want to keep his kids away from him; he's had to tell his son, who would rather live with him, to say he wants to live with his grandparents because he wants his son to protect his daughter. I'm glad to see him turn it around and convince the courts that he is a fit parent for his children.There are some plot twists at the end that I wasn't expecting. I'm not sure a reader could have anticipated them (at least some of them) because Helen wasn't very forthcoming with information that might have allowed readers to guess. In fact, I'm not very clear on whether she told her lawyer (Bo) the full truth or not about what happened. Since I thought her character had been set up to be the epitome of justice, it surprised me that she was willing to let someone else take responsibility (even if only assumed by the jury) for a crime he didn't commit (and in the process create reasonable doubt allowing the person who accidentally committed the crime to go free). The fact that she later doesn't prosecute the person who created the reasonable doubt for that crime but only does so for other crimes doesn't really mitigate that it's bad ethics.

[cjordan916 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Unsympathetic characters, mistakes in the writing with consistency.