Dark Justice (Ben Kincaid Series #8)

by William Bernhardt

Overview

Suffering from courtroom burnout, attorney Ben Kincaid heads to the picturesque Pacific Northwest for some much-needed R and R. 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. With the odds stacked against him, Ben walks into a war zone in the courtroom . . . and a potential killing field in 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780345434760
Publisher:	Random House Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/07/1999
Series:	Ben Kincaid Series , #8
Edition description:	1 MASS MKT
Pages:	448
Product dimensions:	4.21(w) x 6.76(h) x 0.97(d)

About the Author

William Bernhardt made his debut as a novelist with Primary Justice. His subsequent novels include Blind Justice, Deadly Justice, Perfect Justice—which won the Oklahoma Book Award and led The Vancouver Sun to dub the author "the American equivalent of P. G. Wodehouse or John Mortimer"—Double Jeopardy, Cruel Justice, Naked Justice, The Midnight Before Christmas, Extreme Justice, and his newest, Silent Justice.

As an 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.

Read an Excerpt

PROLOGUE
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Dark Justice"
by .
Copyright © 1999 William Bernhardt.
Excerpted by permission of Random House Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

BERNHARDT IS A "MASTER OF THE COURTROOM DRAMA."
—Library Journal

"Thrillingly interwoven plots are Bernhardt's forte, a talent he once again demonstrates full-blown in [Dark Justice] . . . . Subplots swirl and crash around Ben's feet, but these only serve to enrich the entertainment value of this wonderfully riveting read."
—Booklist

From the Publisher

When Ben Kincaid successfully defended George Zakin in a controversial murder trial six years earlier, the attorney never thought he'd be seeing this client again. Now Zakin has been charged with the vicious, premeditated murder of a lumberjack, and Kincaid's career -- and life -- is bolted to the hot seat.

bn.com

Dark Justice is another superlative courtroom thriller from attorney William Bernhardt. The sensitive and smart Ben Kincaid is a hero to die for as he gallantly takes on causes that other people give up on.
— Romantic Times

Toby Bromberg

The eighth in a series of popular courtroom cliffhangers, Bernhardt's newest Ben Kincaid novel (after Extreme Justice) finds the savvy defense attorney in a tiny logging town in the Pacific Northwest. The sinister forces at work behind Magic Valley's Bunyan-esque simplicity emerge when a tree-cutter explodes in anger and kills a local lumberjack--and Ben's old client, George Zakin, is suspected of the foul play. Called on to defend this man again (six years earlier Zakin had been accused and acquitted of an ecoterrorism homicide), Ben reluctantly takes the case. Ben's investigation of the other suspects--a scar-faced drug lord, the mysterious Bigfoot creature often sighted in the thick, dark woods, the leader of a covert logging consortium called "The Cabal" and many a vicious redneck snarling repetitiously about "tree-huggers"--brings Ben into dangerous contact with the Magic Valley's underbelly. The sexiness of Ben's opponent, "stunning young prosecutor" "Granny" Adams, raises the courtroom stakes. But somehow--perhaps because the cranky old hanging judge would rather be fishing--these scenes fail to deliver the drama they promise. Bernhardt juices the suspense with chapter-ending teasers ("The secret would have to die. With her."), but the gratuitous violence and oversimplification of the logging controversy keep the potboiler on medium-high at best. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Windmill-tilting Tulsa lawyer Ben Kincaid (Naked Justice, 1997, etc.), promoting his first book among the vanishing virgin forests of the Northwest, takes on a defense case as hopeless as anything back home. The prosecution-represented by smart, sexy, ambitious, unscrupulous Magic Valley D.A. Rebecca Granville ("Granny") Adams-contends that tree-hugging George Zakin hid out in the woods till he could draw a bead on logger Dwayne Gardiner, shot him through the chest, then watched as Gardiner was burned to death by a booby trap Zak had wired to the ignition of Gardiner's tree cutter. Green Rage, the environmental group Zak heads, has such a long history of quasi-terrorist activity against Gardiner's employer, WLE (We Log Everywhere) that everybody in town, most of them dependent on logging for their livelihood, is united against Green Rage, from the judge who refuses Ben's pleas for a change of venue to the witnesses Granny keeps producing out of her bottomless hat. It doesn't help matters that Ben's introduction to Magic Valley has been his own arrest for attempted catnapping (don't ask), or that six years ago he successfully defended Zak back in Tulsa on another charge of enrivo-murder, freeing him, as everybody claims, to commit this one. But the most damning facts are the ones that come out in court-facts that reveal Ben's own witnesses as liars and brand his client as a wimp who takes the Fifth even when his own lawyer calls him to the stand. The stage is set for giant-killer Ben to rout his obscenely well-financed opponents; but Bernhardt stacks the deck so guilelessly and telegraphs each punch so clearly that the environmentalists and their noble struggle inspire no more convictionthan election-day slogans. Newcomers to the series, now in its eighth installment, will be impressed at how completely Ben can turn a lost case around. Series veterans will know better than to look for anything new. .

Kirkus Reviews