Partners
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
The pristine blue-chip law firm of Stafford, Parrish, and MacAllister stuns the nation by agreeing to step down from its ivory tower and litigate a shocking and sensational plaintiff’s environmental class action. For ambitious attorney Rachel Cannon, this is her make-or-break chance to earn the firm's first female partnership. For S.P.&M.'s best and brightest litigator, Kevin Stone, it is the greatest trial challenge of his career. For both, it quickly becomes the ultimate test of their loyalties, ethics, courage, and deepest desires. For suddenly the high profile, multimillion-dollar trial explodes into a scandalous tumult of greed, power, and shocking multiple murders.
With the firm’s survival in doubt, the goal is no longer about justice, it's about winning--at any cost. As the S.P.&M. top brass plan their courtroom strategy, and streetwise detective Dan Conti tracks a killer, Rachel becomes a pawn in a ruthless game...trapped with Kevin in a tightening web of intrigue, danger, and complicity, and struggling with a nightmare case that could not only shatter Rachel's dreams of love, but destroy her golden career . . . and maybe her life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Martel, a seasoned corporate trial attorney, sets this enjoyable, though largely unsuspenseful first novel at Smith, Parrish & MacAllister, an elite San Francisco law firm feeling the pinch of hard times. At the helm of the foundering ship is Austin Barrington, chilly senior managing partner and acknowledged leader of the ``Table of Three'' that makes all the weighty decisions at SP & M. Desperate to keep the firm from going under, he takes on a class-action suit against a Mafia-backed company accused of poisoning its employees with toxic chemicals. Rachel Cannon, a sharp and beautiful associate hoping to become a partner, and her inamorata Kevin Stone, a much-admired trial lawyer who never loses a case, are part of the litigation team. When three plaintiffs in the suit die in mysterious circumstances, crack homicide inspector Dan Conti begins sniffing around SP & M, where avarice rules. The courtroom shenanigans are a pleasure to read, and Martel excels at building motivation. It's doubly disappointing, therefore, that the melodramatic finale spins utterly out of control. 60,000 first printing; $60,000 ad/promo.