Mary Higgins Clark Award-winning author Rose Connors returns with Cape Cod attorney Marty Nickerson in a riveting new legal thriller.At the urgent request of Harry Madigan, Marty takes on the defense of Louisa Rawlings, a woman suspected of murdering her wealthy husband. Harry is Marty's law partner. He's also her lover -- but he used to be Louisa's.Marty is simultaneously intrigued and disturbed by her new client. Louisa Rawlings is Marty's polar opposite. Glamorous and charismatic, she's entrenched in the good life, openly coveting every luxury money can buy. District Attorney Geraldine Schilling believes Louisa was motivated by greed, and to Marty, that motive seems all too plausible. It also seems too tidy. Marty's gut tells her the murderer was motivated by something far more personal.As the evidence against Louisa mounts, though, Marty begins to doubt her own judgment. The people she normally turns to for perspective are incapable of helping her. Her young a...

Rose Connors brings a fresh voice, a dynamic storytelling power, and a passion for the law to her compelling crime fiction debut. Martha Marty Nickerson is a lawyer who truly loves her job. As an assistant D.A. for Massachusetts’s Barnstable County, which includes all the small towns on Cape Cod, she speaks for the victims of crime and their families, and sees the system as a means for doing right. The case of Manuel Rodriguez is a prime example. Rodriguez is accused of brutally murdering a college student, a kind young man who had a bright future. Marty has worked hard on this case; as the mother of a teenage son, she identifies with the murdered boy’s grieving parents. Her case against Rodriguez is so solid that even public defender Harry Madigan -- the champion of the Cape’s underdogs -- expects a conviction. And, on Memorial Day, exactly a year after the crime, the verdict comes in: guilty as charged. Justice prevails. Then, with Rodriguez behind bars, another body turns up in disturbingly similar circumstances. Did Marty and her colleagues target the wrong man? Her supervisor -- Geraldine Schilling, who aspires to be the county’s first female D.A. -- refuses to reopen such a high-profile case. Why should she? The prosecutors played by the rules and won big. But Marty fears that the real killer will strike again. With her career on the line and lives at stake, Marty must rely on her own moral compass, legal savvy, and gut instinct as she matches wits with a twisted killer. The system itself is on trial as Marty tries to serve Justice, not merely the Law. Only an author with years of courtroom experience could add such riveting authenticity to a novel that asks important questions and provides surprising answers. Rose Connors’s Absolute Certainty introduces a new crime-writing star.

What does a lawyer do when she discovers her client may be a liar, or worse? Charles Kendrick, the senior United States Senator from Massachusetts, has been named a "person of interest" in connection with the disappearance of his twenty-five-year-old spokesperson, Michelle Forrester. Attorney Marty Nickerson is representing Kendrick, a high-profile resident of Cape Cod, but soon finds that parts of his story don't check out. Meanwhile, Marty and her law partner -- and lover -- Harry Madigan, are defending ex-con Derrick Holliston, who stands accused of murdering a popular local priest on Christmas Eve. He admits the killing, but claims, improbably, that he acted in self-defense. Michelle Forrester's body is found the day Derrick Holliston's trial begins, which leaves Marty and Harry facing two mounting legal battles and two clients whose stories don't make sense. Together they must confront the law in all its maddening complexity, battling for -- or maybe against? -- their own cagey clients in order to see that justice is ultimately served. From Publishers WeeklyConnors's latest trip to the courtroom (after Maximum Security) follows busy, resilient Cape Cod attorney Marty Nickerson and her partner in love and law Harry Madigan as they handle two cases in which their clients' stories are highly suspicious. Marty is representing U.S. Sen. from the state of Massachusetts Charles Kendrick, whose attractive, talented 25-year-old staffer Michelle Forrester mysteriously disappears. Harry Madigan, meanwhile, is appointed public defender for recently released young con Derrick Holliston, who pleads self-defense in the brutal Christmas Eve murder of Fr. Francis Patrick McMahon, claiming the priest made untoward sexual advances. Both cases explode: Kendrick, who had a heated love affair with Michelle, admits that he was with her the night before she vanished, and Holliston commits "tactical suicide" with a short-lived decision to represent himself in court. A mad scramble ensues to assemble witnesses for the Kendrick case just as Michelle's body washes up in picturesque Pleasant Bay, an implicating quarter mile from the senator's estate. Connors smartly keeps her sleuthing tight and her courtroom acrobatics succinct for another excellent, fast-moving courtroom drama headed by a plucky, energetic heroine. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From BooklistPartners in love and law, Cape Cod attorneys Marty Nickerson and Harry Madigan don't know how they got themselves mixed up with the two crazy cases they face in their latest outing. In one, a young man barely out of juvenile hall is facing a murder rap and decides to defend himself (though by the judge's orders the attorneys have to sit at the counsel table "just in case"). And then there's Charles Kendrick, a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, who some believe may have been involved in the disappearance of a young office worker. Something seems amiss with both of these clients' stories, and Marty and Harry, usually so tuned in to what's truthful and what's not, feel like they're grasping at straws with two defendants who are opposite in social status but equally stubborn. A quick read with plenty of interesting twists and turns, this fourth outing by established trial attorney Connors is sure to please courtroom-drama fans. Mary Frances WilkensCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

IS HOMICIDAL INSANITY EVER A LEGAL JUSTIFICATION FOR MURDER? Cape Cod attorney Marty Nickerson, formerly a prosecutor, faces hard questions as defense attorney for Buck Hammond. With TV cameras rolling, Buck took justice into his own hands. Now he is charged with murder one but he refuses the only viable defense: insanity. Marty and her partner in love and law, Harry Madigan, are already stretched thin when, on the eve of Buck's trial, a bleeding woman staggers into their office. Her attacker has just been found – dead – and he's an officer of the court. Now Marty has two seemingly impossible cases. But legal motions and courtroom strategy may be the least of her worries, as shocking revelations soon bring fear to the Cape and devastating twists to Buck's trial…