DEAD DOCKET

Two lawyers take on an estate case that leads to a dangerous game of cat and mouse.

Former NYPD detective John Delaney, now a law professor, is in Atlanta to settle the estate of his late father’s police partner’s daughter Sarah O’Connor, who was killed in a fall. The trip is almost a vacation for John, whose lover, Atlanta-based lawyer Katherine Adams (Majestic Descending, 2007), is on hand to help him with local knowledge. After realizing that Sarah’s apartment has been searched, John discovers a cache of porn films of Sarah and her boyfriend Andre Rostov and follows a trail of well-hidden clues to the discovery that she isn’t dead after all. The FBI is just as interested in Sarah. They’d like to know what she did with a file she took while working as an intern for the U.S. Attorney’s office. The file contains evidence that might convict crime boss Warren Blendel, who’s already sent his henchman Hans Schiller and psychopathic killer Joshua to Atlanta to find the file and clean up any loose ends. After John and Katherine find Sarah hiding with Andre’s sister, the three women head for a safe house in Florida while John goes to New York in search of answers. As John is discovering that the file exposes the car accident that killed his father as murder, the Florida trip leads to a nightmare chase through a swamp. Years of cover-ups are exposed in a tense New York courtroom.

An edgy Spenseresque thriller that’s hard to put down.