The Cass Jameson Mysteries Series

Edgar Award Finalist: Her lover murdered, a Brooklyn defense attorney faces an eye-opening mystery. Cass Jameson feels at home in court. A Brooklyn legal-aid attorney, she defends prostitutes, drug dealers, and burglars, helping them navigate the tangled justice system one hearing at a time. After years of drudgery, she dreams of quitting her career in law to become a professional photographer—a dream she has discussed only with her boyfriend, fellow attorney Nathan Wasserstein. It is a dream they will never get to share. One afternoon, Cass finds Nathan’s apartment unlocked. The kitchen has been ransacked, the living room trashed. And in the bedroom, she finds Nathan tied to his bed, savagely murdered. When the police investigation falters, Cass takes it on herself to find her lover’s killer—even if it means learning things about him that make her question everything.

In the highest-profile case of her career, Cass defends her ex-lover in federal court in this Edgar Award–nominated legal thriller It’s hard not to be charmed by Matt Riordan. Ruggedly handsome, with a sharp wit and a voice like Belgian chocolate, he could woo any jury. His clients may be mobsters, but Riordan never seems to have any trouble winning sympathy for them. That charisma worked on Cass Jameson, too, even though she should have been smart enough to know better. A hard-boiled defense attorney who’s made a living going toe to toe with the meanest bastards in Brooklyn, Cass nevertheless fell for the Riordan charm—right until he broke her heart.   Not long after Riordan runs out on her, Cass sees his smiling face on the cover of New York magazine. The most powerful defense attorney in New York has been accused of taking bribes, and he needs Cass to keep him out of jail. When one of Riordan’s most vicious clients gets involved in the case, a smile won’t be enough to keep him alive.

When her client is murdered, Cass must defend a man she loathes In the last three months, Cass Jameson has made eleven appearances in Brooklyn family court, helping a secretary named Linda battle her ex-husband, Brad, for custody of their daughter. When the judge rules in Linda’s favor, Brad flies into a rage, screaming threats so violent that a cop is forced to subdue him. It is an incident that Cass would like to forget. But when she comes home one night and sees the police outside the building where both she and Linda live, she knows she never will.   Linda has been murdered in her apartment, stabbed repeatedly and left to die in a pool of blood. The prime suspect is her ex-husband, but Cass doesn’t believe Brad was capable of murder. After months of fighting him in court, she takes Brad on as a client to prove that he was framed—and to ensure that his daughter has one parent left to count on.

Wracked by guilt, Cass searches for a young mother’s killer On the western edge of Staten Island, not far from the city dump, lies a watery patch of earth known as Fresh Kills. It’s an old Dutch name, and it has nothing to do with violence—until now. A defense lawyer in private practice, Cass lets a friend talk her into handling something she wouldn’t normally touch: an adoption case. It was meant to be open and shut, but it gets messy when the mother, Amber, decides to keep the child—a decision that will mean her death. She is found facedown in the mud of Fresh Kills, and Cass Jameson can’t help but feel that it is all her fault. To wash her hands of guilt, Cass must find Amber’s killer, a search that will take her into a brutal part of the underworld, where children are just another commodity to be bought and sold.    

Two gut-wrenching cases draw Cass into mortal danger In her many years as a defense attorney, Cass Jameson has represented every kind of client—male and female, good and evil, rich and poor. But rarely has she gotten the chance to work for the most unusual client of all: the innocent one. She comes to the second appellate court on behalf of one of these rare blameless victims, Keith Jernigan, to argue that corrupt police work convicted him of a robbery he did not commit. But when she learns that Keith is guilty of something far uglier, she realizes she has been fighting to keep an evil man on the streets—and putting his girlfriend in danger.   While she tries to keep Keith’s girlfriend safe, Cass takes a divorce case on behalf of a brilliant photographer whose husband has been abusing her for years. The divorce turns bloody, and it will take every ounce of Cass’s strength to keep these two situations from becoming twin tragedies.  

To save her brother, Cass must put a cop killer behind bars In 1982, Jan Gebhardt was smuggling illegal immigrants across the Canadian border when a federal agent got in her way. Jan was arrested for his murder, and her boyfriend, Ron, was booked as an accessory. When Jan went into hiding, the charge against Ron was put on hold. Fifteen years later, she emerges to face what she’s done—and drags Ron right down with her. Brooklyn attorney Cass Jameson wouldn’t give a damn about Jan Gebhardt if it weren’t for the fact that Ron is her brother. He’s also a wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran.   She is about to try a separate case when she learns that her brother is facing prison time. Cass gets a forty-eight-hour adjournment from the judge. She has two days to get Ron out of trouble, but he still has feelings for Jan, and this case will destroy a few more lives before it’s through.