Degree of Guilt (Christopher Paget Series #2)

by Richard North Patterson

Overview

TV journalist Mary Carelli admits that she shot and killed Mark Ransom, one of the world's most famous authors. She claims it was self-defense. She swears he tried to rape her. Now she has to prove it in a court of law—with her former lover acting as her attorney…

Christopher Paget is one of the top lawyers in the country. But defending the mother of his son in the trial of the decade, he begins to have doubts. Is Mary telling the truth? Did she invent her story about the rape? What is she hiding? With each shocking revelation, Paget is forced to question his defense, his ethics, and the whole legal system. Because no one, not even the judge, is completely innocent. And guilt is a matter of degree…

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312381615
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	02/02/2010
Series:	Christopher Paget Series , #2
Pages:	711
Product dimensions:	4.10(w) x 7.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

RICHARD NORTH PATTERSON is the author of The Spire, Eclipse and fourteen other bestselling and critically acclaimed novels. Formerly a trial lawyer, he was the SEC liaison to the Watergate special prosecutor and has served on the boards of several Washington advocacy groups. He lives in San Francisco and on Martha's Vineyard with his wife, Dr. Nancy Clair.

Editorial Reviews

A page-turner.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Compulsively readable.” —People

“One intense courtroom clash after another...An intelligent and gripping thriller.” —The Washington Post

“Flamboyant and entertaining.” —The Boston Globe

“Electrifying.” —The Cleveland Plain Dealer

“One of the year's best thrillers…Superb characterizations and intense dialogue make this utterly compelling reading.” —Library Journal

“Absorbing.” —Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Finally, a courtroom drama to rival Presumed Innocent: The scandal-strewn, hugely entertaining story of what happens after a glamorous TV reporter shoots America's most famous writer in his San Francisco hotel room.

As soon as the police take Mary Carelli in after her 911 call, she admits killing Mark Ransom but insists she was defending herself against a rapist who was so obsessed with the story of movie-star Laura Chase—who shot herself 20 years ago after a devastating weekend (never before made public) in which Senator James Colt and two friends repeatedly assaulted her—that he could perform sexually only to the accompaniment of an audiotape of that weekend he'd secretly obtained. Now that James Colt, Jr., is running for governor, the D.A.'s office is under pressure to keep that tape under wraps. Meanwhile, another tape of Ransom forces Mary to confront ugly secrets about her own meteoric rise through her testimony 15 years ago against Presidential staffer Jack Woods—testimony that helped Woods's subordinate, rising star Christopher Paget, bring charges of corruption that destroyed both Woods and the President (as detailed in Patterson's first novel, The Lasko Tangent). Predicting the traumatic impact of these revelations on Paget's beloved son Carlo, whom she's never acknowledged as her own, Mary pressures Paget to defend her on the murder charge. When Mary's account of sexual assault begins to unravel, she seems dead in the water—until Paget uncovers evidence that Ransom had a long history of S/M fantasies with his wife, with an actress whose credits are just like Jane Fonda's, and with a New Yorker writer, whom he assaulted in exactly the samecircumstances Mary describes. But there are dozens of fireworks, both in and out of the courtroom, left to come. Juicy hints of Washington secrets, agonizing decisions about professional and family loyalties, a backstory that plugs into all your most paranoid fantasies connecting the Kennedys, Marilyn Monroe, and Watergate—and all this on top of a polished tale of courtroom intrigue.

Patterson's target audience seems to be everybody who's ever read a book—and most of them will consider it money well-spent.

Kirkus Reviews