Rep & Melissa Pennyworth Series

"A gem of a book that just keeps getting more brilliant page after page."—Michael Stackpole, New York Times bestselling author Attorney Rep Pennyworth faces the client from hell. Charlotte Buchanan, author of a mystery of no particular merit, contends her 1997 novel is the basis for a 1999 film, and she wants to sue. Rep would blow her off, but Charlotte's the daughter of the CEO of Tavistock, Ltd., the firm's major corporate client. Rep digs in, aided by his literature-addicted wife Melissa, and files suit. By return mail comes a death threat, a grisly (and gristly) version of "Hold Your Tongue." The film's director, Hollywood legend Aaron Eastman, and Rep talk and, bit by bit, the outline of a bizarre scheme to destroy his credibility—and that of his films—emerges. Hoosiers Rep and Melissa aren't prepared for the larger licenses granted to political powerhouses, but they're quick on the uptake and soon armed....

"A modern-day Nick and Nora, the quick-witted Rep and the literature-loving Melissa trade sophisticated quips that may make readers wish they had paid more attention in English class. Good fun."—Booklist Intellectual property attorneys, romance publishers, and librarians—the very last people you'd expect to be mixed up in murder! Add a pinch of authentic Civil War re-enactors and a sparkling tour of Kansas City, and voilà, a classic yet up-to-the-minute crime. Rep and Melissa Pennyworth head west from Indiana to a re-enactment on a Civil War battle in Kansas City, Missouri. Rep is really in quest on a cutting-edge copyright case connected with romance publishing house Jackrabbit Press. He finds a corpse instead....

"Bowen's powers of invention are so florid and his satirical touch so bright, most readers won't care who gets carted off to jail."—Kirkus Reviews When a frat boy finds himself on trial in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for piracy on the high seas, Lawyer Rep Pennyworth suspects he's being used as an unwitting accomplice in a cheap publicity stunt. Meanwhile Rep's professor wife Melissa gets caught in the middle of a verbal firefight between two colleagues that soon escalates into burglary, theft, jury-tampering, forgery—and murder. Melissa wants to protect a naïve undergraduate who might be implicated. But when one of the other suspects makes Melissa a cast-iron alibi, her search for the truth leads through a maze of gray lies—including her own. What with an investigative reporter who's still having flashbacks to 1968, a fellow professor whose acute political correctness masks ruthless academic ambition, an engineer whose father's heart attack may have been either suicide or murder, and a brace of cunning lawyers out for blood, Rep and Melissa must combine their talents to stay off the casualty list....

"A winning pair of protagonists."—Booklist Rep Pennyworth, a trademark and copyright lawyer, has loyally followed his wife Melissa to Milwaukee in her quest for an assistant professorship in English Literature at UWM. On the night before the 2008 Army-Navy Game, a midshipman is found stark naked and barely alive in the lobby of a cheap motel near the Naval Academy in Annapolis. The plebe's closest relatives are Ole and Lena Lindstrom, a pair of aging but still scrappy Wisconsin political activists. Ole and Lena have a well-earned reputation for trading punches with each other. So when Ole is murdered, Lena becomes an instant suspect. Rep and Melissa are sure that more than coincidence ties the midshipman's mugging to Ole Lindstrom's murder in Milwaukee....

"Bowen effectively captures his Midwestern locale and takes readers on a fast-paced, exciting ride."—Publishers Weekly Vance Hayes died while joyriding on a snowmobile late one night near the Wisconsin Dells. The cold-hearted, hard-headed lawyer goes unmourned by clients, colleagues, or anyone else—including his reluctant eulogist, fellow attorney Rep Pennyworth. In fact, interest in Hayes' death is merely perfunctory until it intersects with the perils facing Vietnamese-American court reporter Sue Key, who is tied to Milwaukee's Hmong community. Could it be that Hayes died not because of any of the rotten and vicious things he did, but because of one decent, human endeavor? The situation is further complicated by deer season when for several weeks in the fall, "up north" is home to 700,000 people carrying loaded firearms. Can Rep and his shrewd wife Melissa find in them the key to solving the puzzle of Vance Hayes' death?