William Bernhardt Mystery Novels

William Bernhardt Books

Murder One by William Bernhardt

Amazon.com
It doesn't seem possible that petite, blonde Keri Dalcanton could have stabbed police sergeant Joe McNaughton 20 times, dragged his body to a public square in downtown Tulsa, chained the corpse naked to a fountain, and hog-tied him, breaking several of his bones before she cut off his penis, stuffed it in his mouth, and wrote "Faithless" across his chest in his own blood. But McNaughton's friends on the force are convinced that the stripper was responsible. When Ben Kincaid takes Keri's case, they do everything they can to ensure that the hero cop killer's lawyer pays for her defense with his own blood, too.
Ben is convinced that Keri was framed. Beyond that, he's a little bit in love with her. The "blue squeeze" put on him by the Tulsa PD does nothing to convince him that he's wrong, not even when he's arrested and charged with complicity in McNaughton's death. Kincaid, Bernhardt's series hero (Dark Justice, Silent Justice), is a decent, hard-working lawyer who has offended too many Tulsa movers and shakers to put his still-struggling law firm into the black. When the girlfriend of one of his staffers is attacked as she's zeroing in on evidence that could free Keri, Ben plunges ahead with his defense, regardless of the danger it puts him in. Bernhardt's trademark pacing and courtroom expertise deliver this legal thriller to a riveting conclusion, with a surprise ending that most readers won't see coming.
Book Description
In Murder One, bestselling author William Bernhardt thrusts idealistic Tulsa, Oklahoma, attorney Ben Kincaid into the most controversial courtroom challenge of his career . . . an explosive murder case that Kincaid will confront not only as a lawyer--but as a defendant.
The crime is remarkably heinous: veteran police detective Joe McNaughton is found savagely slain, mutilated, and hung from a public fountain in downtown Tulsa. Scrawled across his chest in blood is the word FAITHLESS. The accused is a tabloid reporter's dream: stunning, nineteen-year-old Keri Dalcanton, a stripper involved in a kinky affair with the married McNaughton . . . and now cast by media, police, and public alike as a vengeful woman scorned.
Powerful circumstantial evidence and the prosecution's deftly orchestrated attacks on the defendant's character have Kincaid's client all but convicted. Until a major technical blunder by overzealous cops overturns the case--and sets Keri Dalcanton free. Amid a firestorm of outrage, Ben maintains his client's innocence. But angry comrades of the victim are convinced otherwise--and vow to see "justice" done, by any means necessary.
When a police raid on his office uncovers the bloody murder weapon, Ben gets a first-hand taste of the infamous Blue Squeeze. And as a new trial of Keri Dalcanton is launched, Ben faces his own day in court, charged with conspiracy and murder. What follows is a breathlessly twisting battle of legal wits--and lethal surprises--in which no holds are barred, no secrets are left unexposed, and ultimately, nothing is what it seems.
With Murder One, the author of Silent Justice and Dark Justice breaks loose and surpasses his own acclaimed reputation for legal thrillers that are "engrossing" (Associated Press), "throat-grabbing" (New York Daily News), and "richly drawn" (Chicago Tribune). This is William Bernhardt's electrifying entrée into the front ranks of crime fiction.

Extreme Justice (Ben Kincald Series , No 7) by William Bernhardt

Disillusioned with both the legal system and his private life, criminal attorney Ben Kincaid abandons his practice for a less stressful pastime: playing with a combo at Uncle Earl's Jazz Emporium. The musician's life is bliss--until a corpse crashes through the ceiling with a grisly smile carved on its face.
The body is that of "Cajun Lily" Campbell, legendary singer and onetime girlfriend of club owner Earl Bonner. The cops are convinced that Bonner killed her--and Kincaid knows he didn't. Though he swore he was through with law forever, Kincaid descends into an underworld of gangs, drugs, Internet sex "clubs," and long-standing vendettas. And at the bottom, a killer waits, targeting Kincaid as the next to die with a smile on his face.
Summary
From the author of "Naked Justice" and "Dark Justice" comes the seventh gripping legal thriller in the bestselling Ben Kincaid series. Ben Kincaid trades practicing law for playing jazz, until the murder of a famous singer draws him into the search for a killer with a deadly past.

Deadly Justice by William Bernhardt

Ben Kincaid is not a superstar attorney. In Tulsa, Oklahoma, there are only a few lawyers who win headlines and big bucks. So when the notorious Apollo Consortium offers Ben a job as their in-house counsel, he takes it--for the money.

The violence in the streets outside the Apollo is nothing compared to the backstabbing politics of the firm. And when Ben wins his first case, he unwittingly sets up some bitter rivalry with his colleagues--rivalry that will culiminate in a fellow lawyer's dead body and Ben charged with murder.
Summary
Hired as in-house counsel to the notorious Apollo Consortium, attorney Ben Kincaid wins his first case and unwittingly sets up a bitter rivalry that will culminate in murder.

Double Jeopardy by William Bernhardt

The bestselling author of Cruel Justice turns loose a thriller with non-stop action. When mobster Al Moroconi is charged with orchestrating a heinous crime against a young woman, the first defense attorney on the case mysteriously disappears. Then a federal judge appoints Travis Byrne to speak for the defense, and Byrne finds himself caught between the mob and the FBI--and on the run for a murder he didn't commit.

Silent Justice by William Bernhardt

When a powerful corporation is charged with dumping toxic chemicals into a community's drinking water and killing innocent children, Ben Kincaid knows the class action suit is a suicide mission. Facing off against the small Kincaid staff is Tulsa's largest law firm. Challenging Ben in the courtroom is the firm's fabled top gun--not to mention a hot-headed judge with a notorious soft spot for big business. But as Ben prepares for legal battle, a sadistic killer strikes. With each gruesome murder, a terrifying connection is more deeply drawn between Ben's quest for justice and another man's relentless hunt for the spoils of his own private--and very dirty--war.

Blind Justice by William Bernhardt

Out of corporate life and on his own, lawyer Ben Kincaid sees the seamy side of the law every day. There's no glamour and little reward when it comes to defending the lowlifes who beat down his door. But when a friend is set up for murder, Ben has no choice but to enter the world of hardball litigation and face a judge who despises him in a trial he is guaranteed to lose.
BLIND JUSTICE is a riveting, emotion-packed thriller in which guilt and innocence remain obscure and justice is a matter of opinion. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
Summary
Formerly a corporate lawyer, Ben Kincaid now works for himself defending the dregs of society, but he begins to see the justice system for what it really is when he defends a friend who has been framed for murder.

Perfect Justice by William Bernhardt

A young Vietnamese immigrant is brutally slaughtered by a crossbow. The prime suspect is a ruthless member of a white supremacy group. When attorney Ben Kincaid reluctantly agrees to confer with the presumed murderer, he encounters a chilling certainty: an innocent man has been cast as a scapegoat. To rebalance the scales of justice, Ben chooses to represent the accused man--thereby placing both attorney and client at the explosive center of a community torn apart by xenophobia, racism, and violence.
But the real fireworks will go off in court--in an incendiary murder trial with more twists than a dustbowl tornado.
Summary
From the bestselling author of Primary Justice and Deadly Justice comes another courtroom suspense shocker in the tradition of Presumed Innocent. Ben Kincaid faces the legal battle of his career--defending himself against a charge of murder!

Cruel Justice by William Bernhardt

Leeman Hayes, a black teenager in Tulsa, is accused of brutally murdering a young woman. As attorney Ben Kincaid struggles to pull together a defense, a young boy is falling into the clutches of a child molester. Ten-year-old Abie Rutherford, lonely and desperate for approval, thinks the handsome, smiling stranger in the baseball cap might be that friend he has longed for.
When Abie Rutherford vanishes without a trace one hot summer day, Ben Kincaid, like everyone else in Tulsa, fears the worst. Then a bone-chilling discovery compels Ben to forge a link between the missing boy and the seemingly hopeless case of Leeman Hayes--thereby igniting the fuse for the most explosive courtroom case of Ben's career.
Summary
Ten years after African-American teen Leeman Hayes is accused of beating a young woman at a posh Tulsa country club, attorney Ben Kincaid struggles for the defense, a case that is complicated when a ten-year-old boy is kidnapped by a child molester.

Naked Justice by William Bernhardt

As Tulsa's first black mayor and a former college football hero, Wallace Barrett was a city treasure--until he became the prime suspect in the gruesome murder of his wife and two daughters. Seen splattered with blood and fleeing his house after the crime, the mayor needs a miracle. Enter Ben Kincaid.
While Kincaid may not be the slickest attorney in Tulsa, he has a knack for pulling off the impossible. But with a frenzied media, a string of damning expert witnesses for the prosecution, and surprise testimony that could rip right through Kincaid's already tenuous defense, impossible never looked so tough.
Summary
As Tulsa's first black mayor and a former college football hero, Wallace Barrett is a city treasure--until he becomes the prime suspect in the gruesome murder of his wife and two daughters. Seen splattered with blood and fleeing his house after the crime, the mayor needs a miracle. Enter Ben Kincaid. He may not be the slickest attorney in Tulsa, but he has a knack for pulling off the impossible.

Dark Justice by William Bernhardt

With his nine dazzling Ben Kincaid novels, author William Bernhardt has drawn acclaim as a master of the courtroom drama who "throws in just enough plot twists to foil most armchair detectives" (the Associated Press). Now, in Dark Justice, the winner of the Oklahoma Book Award continues to do exceptional justice to the legal thriller.
Suffering from courtroom burnout, Ben Kincaid hopes to leave trials and the tribulations of a lawyer's life behind in Tulsa as he sets out for some much-needed R and R in the picturesque Pacific Northwest. But Ben's blissful getaway becomes a busman's holiday in the small town of Magic Valley, where a pitched battle between the local logging industry and crusading conservationists has led to brutal murder.
Years earlier, professional activist George Zakin was successfully defended against a charge of murder by a fledgling attorney named Ben Kincaid. Now, accused of viciously killing a lumberjack, Zakin is counting on Ben to duplicate that long-ago courtroom coup and save his neck a second time. Ben has no doubt that his client is innocent, but in a town where logging is a way of life, and save-the-trees advocates are branded "eco-terrorists," he knows winning the case will be an uphill fight.
It doesn't help that Ben's opponent is Rebecca Granville "Granny" Adams, a homegrown prosecutor with a reputation for being as ruthless as she is ravishing. With the odds stacked against him, Ben walks into a war zone in the courtroom . . . and a potential killing field in the streets and woods of Magic Valley, an explosive place where allies and enemies are hard to tell apart--and digging for the truth is as good as digging your grave.
Laced with sly wit and loaded with surprising twists, Dark Justice makes another ironclad case for bestselling author William Bernhardt's skills as a master of the brilliantly plotted, stunningly suspenseful legal thriller.
Summary
Attorney Ben Kincaid's vacation in the Pacific Northwest is interrupted by murder when ex-client and current professional environmentalist seeks his aid in defending him against murder charges in the midst of a war between conservationists and loggers.

The Midnight Before Christmas by William Bernhardt

Amazon.com
Like homemade eggnog with a bite of something stronger, this Christmas-themed thriller by William Bernhardt (best known for his legal thrillers set in Oklahoma City) introduces several thoroughly miserable characters destined to run afoul on Christmas Eve. Carl, an alcoholic ex-cop and ex-husband, rages against his former wife Bonnie and threatens to kill his 7-year-old son Tommy. The police still regard Carl as one of their own, and they won't listen to Bonnie's complaints of violence. Meanwhile, Megan McGee, a lawyer and ex-Episcopalian priest, is delivering Christmas cookies to the elderly, accompanied only by her unwanted roommate, a smelly and drooling bulldog named Jasper. By the time Bonnie catches up with Megan to get a restraining order on Carl, he has abducted Tommy and disappeared. Now, it's up to Megan to track Tommy down before Carl's bloody rantings become reality. The characters reveal more depth than anticipated from a holiday novel, and the chase is especially disturbing set against the backdrop of a quiet city celebrating peace on earth. For those who enjoy seasonal fiction, this fast-paced dose of Christmas thrills will provide a delicious escape after a busy shopping frenzy.
Book Description
William Bernhardt has won critical acclaim for his bestselling series of legal thrillers featuring Oklahoma-based attorney Ben Kincaid. Now Bernhardt takes a holiday from the courtroom to deliver a suspenseful, pulse-pounding tale of Christmastime crime with all the trimmings.
'Tis the day before Christmas, and all through the town,
someone evil's at large, spreading mayhem around!
Thirtysomething lawyer Megan McGee is facing a quiet Christmas with her bulldog when Bonnie Thomas, a battered wife, comes looking for legal protection from her violent ex-cop husband, Carl. In a recent bout of rage, Carl vowed to kill their seven-year-old son, Tommy, rather than be separated from the boy. It's no idle threat, either--as Bonnie assures Megan: "He's tried before."
And when Tommy's school unwittingly allows him to leave with his father, Carl gets his chance to try again.
Now, with the town all but shut down for the holiday, Megan races against time--and terror--to keep Carl's Christmas Eve jaunt from turning into a slay ride.
This season, the weather outside isn't the only thing that's frightful. . .

The Code of Buddyhood by William Bernhardt

Ten years after their undergraduate years together, Bobby Beresford and Mark Szasz meet again at a college reunion and are forced to reopen old wounds and confront painful secrets.

About the Author
William Bernhardt is the author of thirteen books, including Primary Justice, Blind Justice, Deadly Justice, Perfect Justice, Double Jeopardy, Cruel Justice, and Naked Justice--which led Library Journal to dub the author "master of the courtroom drama." He has twice won the Oklahoma Book Award for Best Fiction. A former trial attorney, Bernhardt has received several awards for his public service, and in 1993 he was named one of the top twenty-five young lawyers in the nation. He lives in Tulsa with his wife, Kirsten, and their children, Harry and Alice.

OxfordBooks.com / Oxford, MS

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