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A Leo Maxwell Mystery
by Lachlan Smith 5 Feb 2013
272 pages
Publisher: Mysterious Press
ISBN-13: 9780802120793
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Leo Maxwell grew up in the shadow of his older brother, Teddy, a successful yet reviled criminal defense attorney who racked up enemies as quickly as he racked up acquittals. As children, their father was jailed for the murder of their mother, and Teddy was left to care for Leo who tried to emulate his older brother, even following him into the legal profession.
The two are at lunch one day when Teddy, supposed to give the closing argument of his current trial that afternoon, is shot: in public, in cold blood, the shooter escaping without Leo being able to identify him. As Teddy lies in a coma, Leo comes to the conclusion that the search for his brother's shooter falls upon him and him alone, as his brother's enemies were not merely the scum on the street but embedded within the police department as well. As he begins to examine the life of a brother he realizes he barely knew, Leo quickly realizes that the list of possible suspects is much larger than he could have imagined.
The deeper Leo digs into Teddy's life, the more questions arise: questions about Teddy and his ex-wife, questions about the history of the Maxwell family, even questions about the murder that tore their family apart all those years ago. And somewhere, the person who shot his brother is still on the loose, and there are many who would happily kill Leo in order to keep it that way.
"Starred Review. Set in 1999, Smith's powerful legal thriller debut, the first in a series, grabs the reader by the throat and doesn't let go...Assured prose and taut plotting add up to a winner." - Publisher's Weekly
"Starred Review. Smith's first novel offers a superior blend of amateur-detective mystery and belated-coming-of-age novel cunningly masked as a legal thriller ... a
terrific debut. A perfect match with David Carnoy's novels and Michael Connelly's Mickey Haller series." - Booklist
"This engaging debut by a practicing Alabama attorney features well-drawn if somewhat unlikable characters and enough plot twists to please any mystery fan." - Library Journal
"Lachlan Smith has done the impossible - written a riveting debut novel that stands with the best legal thrillers on my bookshelf. In Bear Is Broken, Smith establishes a commanding presence, a gift for complex plotting, and an ability to create richly drawn characters who draw the reader into the action from the opening scene." - Linda Fairstein, best-selling author of Night Watch
"Lachlan Smith brings the culture of the courthouse and the complicated relationship between two brothers to life in this excellent debut." - Alafair Burke, bestselling author of Never Tell
"Bear is Broken is a spectacular novel, managing to be both literary and suspenseful. Particularly admirable is Lachlan Smith's exploration of the relationship between Leo Maxwell and his tragically sidelined brother; never for a second does the twisting plot slacken. One of the best debuts I've read in years." - William Bernhardt, author of the best-selling Ben Kincaid series
Lachlan Smith was a Stegner Fellow at Stanford, and received an MFA from Cornell. His fiction has appeared in the Best New American Voices series. In addition to writing novels, he is an attorney practicing in the area of civil rights and employment law. He lives in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
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