Pro Bono

by Thomas Perry

Overview

A tenacious attorney grapples with a dangerous group of thieves in this new thriller from the author of The Old Man.

Charles Warren, Los Angeles attorney, has dedicated his career to aiding people in financial straits. He is particularly skilled at the art of recovering assets that have been embezzled or hidden. In his newest case, helping a beautiful young widow find the money missing from her late husband’s investment accounts, Charlie recognizes a familiar scheme—one that echoes the con job that targeted his own widowed mother many years before, and that led him, as a teenager, to commit a crime of retribution that still weighs on his conscience. Charlie can’t get the present case out of his mind, but within hours of starting his investigation, he is followed, shot at, and has his briefcase stolen. It’s clear that someone doesn’t want him following the trail of the missing money but, as Charlie continues to pursue answers, he quickly becomes too entangled in the web of fraud, betrayal, and career criminals surrounding the theft to escape its deadly snare. A nail-biting tale of conspiracy and pursuit from Thomas Perry, “a dominating force in the world of contemporary suspense thrillers” (Publishers Weekly), Pro Bono will have readers looking over their shoulders as constantly as they keep turning pages.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613167502
Publisher:	Penzler Publishers
Publication date:	02/24/2026
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Thomas Perry is the Edgar-winning author of over thirty novels, including The Butcher’s Boy, which Parade magazine included in its 2021 list of 101 Best Mystery Books of All Time, and Metzger’s Dog, which NPR listeners voted one of the “Best Thrillers of All Time.” His novel The Old Man was the inspiration for the television series starring Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow, and his novel Strip inspired the film Bear Country starring Russell Crowe, which is now in production.

Read an Excerpt

While Warren was waiting for the attendant to bring the car to the curb, he noticed a Range Rover idling in the right lane. It seemed to be waiting its turn to pull ahead and have an attendant come and park it. The odd thing was that there wasn’t a car in front of it. There wasn’t a rule that a car had to pull forward as far as it could, but it was the normal thing to do. Warren stepped back two steps so he could see past the headlights, and saw there were two men in the front seats of the Range Rover.

A moment later the attendant drove Warren’s car to the curb and stood holding the driver’s door open, so Warren walked up, handed him the money, got in, and as he fastened his seat belt, looked in his rearview mirrors, trying to be certain the other car wasn’t about to move forward just as he pulled out. The Range Rover was immobile, and it was blocking other cars from coming along in the right lane, so Warren took the opportunity and pulled out and away from Bernardine.

The Range Rover pulled forward, but the driver didn’t swing close to the curb and turn it over to the parking attendant. Instead, the car sped up and followed Warren’s. It looked as though the two men had been waiting for him. Were they cops? For half his life he had been having that thought, but there was no rationality to it anymore. If anything was going to happen it would have been seventeen years ago. That was over. If the police had wanted to talk to him about a client, he wasn’t hard to find. He spent most of his days in an office with his name on the door. If they had suspected him of something and wanted to do surveillance on him in a plain car, then presumably they would have stayed back and preserved the distance between them.

He thought about driving back to his office to pick up a few of the reports Mrs. Ellis had brought in. He turned to the right and drove a block, then realized it had been an unrealistic idea. He had his legal pad in his briefcase in the trunk with several pages of dates and amounts of transactions, names of people responsible for accounts, and related questions and thoughts. He still hadn’t had dinner and he had enough information on his computer to keep him busy all night. At the office tomorrow he could get help with some of the time-consuming tracing. He pulled into a driveway, backed out, and saw that the Range Rover from Bernardine was a block away, coming toward him.

They had followed him from the restaurant, and gone around the block when he had. They were up to something. Robbery? He drove toward them as though he had no memory of seeing them earlier. He knew he had to decide quickly. He could try to lose them, or at least get so far ahead that he had time to use his remote control to open the iron bars that blocked his building’s underground garage, get inside, close the barrier and then disappear into the elevator or up the stairs. His dilemma was that they had made a mistake, and he couldn’t be sure they would ever make another. He decided he had to use this chance to get behind their car and take a picture of its license plate.

If they had been waiting to pull a follow-home robbery on somebody just because they had enough money to pick up dinner at Bernardine, they had not been very clever about it. Their tactics seemed more like an attempt to intimidate him than to surprise him. He was in the profession of fighting clients’ battles, and he was good at it, so there had to be a growing number of former opponents who hated him for old cases he’d won. If any of them had reached the point of hiring people to do something about it, this might be his only chance to find out who they were before they did it.

He turned right again, drove at high speed for two blocks, and pulled over at the curb near the corner, where he could see the cars going by on Wilshire Boulevard toward his condominium building, turned off his lights but left his engine running. If they were trying to come after him, they would have realized by now that he had eluded them. They would have no logical choice but to double back onto the Boulevard and try to catch up with him before he reached home.

Warren watched and waited for the black Range Rover to go past. Black was a common car color in Los Angeles. The Range Rover had tinted side windows, and a lot of cars had those too. Every time a black car sped across his field of vision from right to left, he jumped a little, ready to go after it, but it was always the wrong black car. Minutes went by, but he still didn’t see the Range Rover. He became more and more primed. He told himself that each second when he didn’t see it brought the time closer when he would see it. His eyes were focused on the cars speeding past, almost afraid to blink for fear of missing it. He took out his phone and pressed the camera symbol so it would be ready. And then he realized that too much time had passed.

He put his phone into his coat pocket and reached for the headlight switch. His hand didn’t reach it, because in that moment, a metal implement swung against the passenger side window and smashed the glass. Warren’s head spun toward the noise and he saw the white hand, the black sleeve, the tire iron, and fragments of glass spraying onto the empty seat and his lap.

Editorial Reviews

"Irresistible . . . A model of suspense."— Kirkus

"Gasp-inducing. . . . Fascinating financial crimes information, delivered by an extremely likable, resourceful hero, enhances this crafty game of cat and mouse."— Booklist

"You will find yourself looking over your shoulders while reading this one. Pro Bono hits a lot of great notes and elevates the financial thriller to new heights."— BookReporter

"Few crime-fiction authors are as skilled as Thomas Perry at keeping readers off balance and in suspense. Mr. Perry's Pro Bono, a cutthroat caper of embezzlement and revenge, . . . has more twists than Topanga Canyon"— Wall Street Journal

"Thomas Perry's newest novel, Pro Bono once again demonstrate[s] that he is a master of the suspense/thriller genre creating his own distinctive style of mystery that is packed with suspense and the kind of unexpected twists and turns that keep the reader’s steady and rapt attention from start to finish. An original, memorable, and fun read from cover to cover."— Midwest Book Review

From the Publisher

2024-11-09
A lawyer who takes on a pro bono case earns his payment many times over in this lumpy but irresistible thriller.

Three years after George Ellis left a party he was hosting and never returned, his wife, Vesper, notices that some of his investment accounts have been shrinking instead of growing. Suspecting fraud, she consults Charles Warren, who’s been recommended by a mutual friend. Charlie turns out to be an excellent choice for several reasons. He’s both an attorney and accountant, so he’s good with numbers. He’s hard to bully, as any number of bankers and potential assailants learn to their cost. And he has both sympathy for the victims of fraud and extensive criminal experience, which began long ago when he raced after his fleeing stepfather, Mack Stone—who’d plundered the accounts of Charlie’s mother—running him off the road into a fatal crash that’s never been tied to Charlie except by Andy Minkeagan and Alvin Copes, two convicts who turned up at the scene of Mack’s accident ahead of the police, ran off with his financial papers, and are still bent on finding a way to cash in on their discovery. In fact, Charlie and Vesper are surrounded by so many lowlifes in pinstripes that it’s a good thing they have each other. As the story goes on, though, the obstacles to Charlie’s legal victories seem to fall away, and readers familiar with Perry’s knack for steering his tales in new directions they never saw coming may wonder what will happen during those last hundred pages. A series of completely new threats against a completely different person, that’s what.

A model of suspense, though not of construction.

Kirkus Reviews