



The Outsider
A Novel
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3.9 • 9 Ratings
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- $12.99
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
A young Supreme Court law clerk finds himself caught in the crosshairs of a serial killer in The Outsider, a breathtaking thriller #1 New York Times bestseller James Patterson called “as authentic and suspenseful as any John Grisham novel.”
Things aren’t going well for Grayson Hernandez. He just graduated from a fourth-tier law school, he’s drowning in student debt, and the only job he can find is as a messenger. The position stings the most because it’s at the Supreme Court, where Gray is forced to watch the best and the brightest—the elite group of lawyers who serve as the justices’ law clerks—from the outside.
When Gray intervenes in a violent mugging, he lands in the good graces of the victim: the Chief Justice of the United States. Gray soon finds himself the newest—and unlikeliest—law clerk at the Supreme Court. It’s another world: highbrow debates over justice and the law in the inner sanctum of the nation’s highest court; upscale dinners with his new friends; attention from Lauren Hart, the brilliant and beautiful co-clerk he can’t stop thinking about.
But just as Gray begins to adapt to his new life, the FBI approaches him with unsettling news. The Feds think there’s a killer connected to the Supreme Court. And they want Gray to be their eyes and ears inside One First Street. Little does Gray know that the FBI will soon set its sights on him.
Racing against the clock in a world cloaked in secrecy, Gray must uncover the truth before the murderer strikes again in this thrilling high-stakes story of power and revenge by Washington, D.C. lawyer-turned-author Anthony Franze.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The hero of this implausible legal Cinderella story from Franze (The Advocate's Daughter) is Grayson Hernandez, graduate of a fourth-rate law school who has managed only to find work as a mailroom clerk in the United States Supreme Court. Then, one day after his shift, Gray enters the court's parking garage, where he interrupts an assault and saves the life of Chief Justice Edgar Douglas. As a reward, Douglas makes Gray one of his law clerks, a position in which Gray will be directly involved in drafting memos and opinions on the most pressing legal issues of the day. Meanwhile, dogged FBI special agent Emma Milstein suspects that the attack on Douglas is part of a horrific series of crimes that include the murders of a defense attorney and her family, a fatal fire at a movie theater, and the killing of a convenience store clerk, all committed on the fifth of the month. Predictably, Gray decides to do his own detecting and places his life at risk. Thin characters don't make suspending disbelief any easier.