Robin Starling, Lady Lawyer
She’s a five-foot-eleven, a 31-year-old blonde who is already making a reputation for herself in criminal defense work. Here is how she describes herself.
The photo that had accompanied the last newspaper article made me look like a longtime inmate in a woman’s prison. It took me a while to recognize the outfit I was wearing, but when I did, I got rid of it. “I really don’t like being in the paper,” I said.
“Oh, come on, the picture wasn’t that bad—” Paul had heard me complain about the photograph before. “—and how else are you going to build your business?”
“I know, I know. But picture aside, the article made me out to be some kind of super lawyer.”
“And that’s bad?”
“It can be. Eventually, I’ll be going into court without my superpower.”
He put down his fork and laced his fingers in front of him. “I don’t think I’ve heard about your superpower.”
“People look at my sweet face and my blonde hair, and they think I’m like that blonde who came across some tracks while hiking in the woods.”
“What blonde is that?” He picked up his water cup.
“She was trying to figure out what kind of animal made the tracks when the train hit her.”
He sucked water down the wrong pipe and choked on it.
“When people underestimate you, you don’t have to be as good,” I said.
But Robin is good. The Robin Starling legal thrillers are a series of light-hearted romps through the streets of Richmond, Virginia, with Robin, her dog Deacon, her infatuated boyfriend and her nervous girl friend. Always engaging without being stressful, the stories are murder mysteries, legal thrillers, and just plain fun.
Author Michael Monhollon is an attorney and a professor of business law who left private practice to write courtroom dramas and teach law to undergraduates who are never sure where the lesson is going to take them.
The Robin Starling Courtroom Mysteries
The seven legal thrillers featuring Robin Starling are part of a mystery series with a feisty female lawyer as the protagonist.
Book 1
In Trial by Ambush, the athletic, thirty-year-old Robin Starling finds herself defending her cheating ex-boyfriend on the charge of murdering a woman who played with her on a Final Four basketball team when they were in college.
Book 2
In book two of the series, the district attorney goes after her license for Juggling Evidence in the courtroom.
Book 3
Dog Law has Robin taking care of a new puppy and trying to save a college girl from the machinations of an evil stepmother.
Book 4
When an elderly man is found dead in his nephew’s hot tub, his Laughing Heirs begin the scramble for his assets. It’s work for Robin Starling and serious trouble for the brother of Robin’s friend Brooke.
Book 5
The old man offers her $30,000 for representing him, but in Devil in the Dock Robin soon comes to believe she’s defending a demon in human form.
Book 6
In Gone Ballistic, Robin traces a pistol that arrived in her mail to a recently murdered man who had been cheating on his wife.
Book 7
There are enough love triangles in Sexual Misconduct to construct a nice set of earrings, not to mention the mandatory murder.
Stand-alone Legal Thrillers
The other two legal thrillers are stand-alone novels. Criminal Intent, the author’s first novel, spawned a legion of admirers – at least of the title, which has been borrowed by legal thriller writers and made famous by the TV series, “Law and Order: Criminal Intent.” Sample the original, keeping in mind that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Guilty Knowledge begins with Alan Dougherty plunging immediately into girl trouble and floundering from there into money laundering and murder.
Something Different
According to Booklist, the trade journal of the American Library Association, Divine Invasion was one of the ten best Christian novels of 1998. It’s a novelization of the life of Jesus that draws on Josephus and period research as well as the gospel accounts. In the gospels, you get a good sense of the personality and character of Jesus. My aim was to stay true to that while fleshing out the scenes and the lesser characters.
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