Beyond Reasonable Doubt

by Robert Dugoni

Overview

A master manipulator accused of murder. An attorney sworn to defend her. Keera Duggan returns in a riveting novel of suspense by New York Times bestselling author Robert Dugoni.

When Jenna Bernstein, disgraced wunderkind CEO of a controversial biotech company, is accused of murdering her former partner and lover, she turns to Seattle attorney Keera Duggan to defend her. Keera is more than a master chess player who brings her intuitive moves into court—she’s Jenna’s childhood friend. But considering their history, Keera knows that where Jenna goes, trouble follows.

Five years earlier, Keera’s father successfully defended Jenna when she was tried for the killing of her company’s chief scientist who threatened to go public with allegations of corporate fraud. Keera knows Jenna too well. When she was a kid, Keera saw Jenna for what she was: a manipulative and frighteningly controlling sociopath. Now, with only circumstantial evidence against Jenna, Keera is willing to bury any trepidation she might have to defend a woman she believes, this time, to be innocent.

As the investigation gets underway and disturbing questions arise, Keera puts her trust in a client who swears that this time she's telling nothing but the truth. If this is all just another devious game, Keera might be working to set a murderer free.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781662500220
Publisher:	Amazon Publishing
Publication date:	10/22/2024
Series:	Keera Duggan , #2
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	32,525
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Robert Dugoni is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Amazon Charts bestselling author of several series, including Tracy Crosswhite, Charles Jenkins, David Sloane, and Keera Duggan. His stand-alone novels include Damage Control, The 7th Canon, The World Played Chess, and The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, which was named Suspense Magazine’s 2018 Book of the Year and won Dugoni an AudioFile Earphones Award for his narration. The Washington Post named his nonfiction exposé The Cyanide Canary a Best Book of the Year. Dugoni is the recipient of the Nancy Pearl Book Award for fiction and a multi-time winner for best novel set in the Pacific Northwest. He has been a finalist for many other awards. Dugoni’s books are sold in more than twenty-five countries and have been translated into more than thirty languages, reaching over ten million readers worldwide. He lives in Seattle. Visit his website at robertdugonibooks.com.

Editorial Reviews

A cunning master class in why you should always trust your lawyer, and what it’ll cost you if you do.” —Kirkus Reviews

From the Publisher

08/19/2024

In Dugoni’s contrived sequel to Her Deadly Game, Seattle defense attorney Keera Duggan helps a childhood acquaintance fight her second murder charge in six years. Biotech CEO Jenna Bernstein is better known for the allegations that she killed her company’s chief science officer than for her business acumen. Keera’s father, Patsy, defended Jenna in that case, using her testimony to point suspicion toward her COO, Sirius Kohl. Now, Sirius has been shot with the same weapon used in the earlier murder—just as rumors have started spreading that he was cooperating with the feds to bring a fraud charge against Jenna. With Patsy incapacitated by alcoholism, Keera takes the lead in clearing Jenna’s name, despite the pair’s tense childhood friendship, which ended when Jenna tried to drown Keera. Unfortunately, Jenna is a bit too broadly drawn for readers to buy into her and Keera’s dynamic, and the plot twists fall flat. Even fans of the previous installment are likely to find this one undercooked. Agent: Meg Ruley, Jane Rotrosen Agency. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

2024-08-17
Five years after attorney Patsy Duggan, Seattle’s Irish Brawler, got CEO Jenna Bernstein found not guilty of killing a scientist about to reveal some ugly secrets about her firm, Jenna has to rely on Patsy’s daughter, Keera, when she’s accused of killing an even more highly placed co-worker.

The sad truth about the LINK, a revolutionary “Fountain of Youth” technology that allows noninvasive refashioning of human tissue, is that it doesn’t work. Hours after Erik Wei, a researcher at Ponce de León Restorative Technology, had threatened to go public with this unwelcome news, he was shot dead, and Jenna, the wunderkind boss he reported to, was arrested for his murder. Patsy’s fancy footwork won the day for her back then, but now Patsy, an alcoholic with a long history of health problems, is too old and inconsistent to defend Jenna in a new case, in which she is accused of shooting Sirus Kohl—her CFO, her COO, the owner of 48% of PDRT, and, it turns out, the lover who was about to turn on her. Keera agrees to take it on, though that’s not a decision she makes lightly, since from the time they were in school together, she’s regarded Jenna as a narcissistic liar who certainly could have shot Kohl. The victim’s daughter, PDRT general counsel Adria Kohl, certainly thinks she did, and she’s willing to say whatever it takes to put Jenna away for good this time. With a mountain of circumstantial evidence against Jenna, Keera has her work cut out for her. Dugoni draws freely on a celebrated real-life criminal trial interested readers will identify within the opening pages, but the nerve-racking changes he brings to the trials of the defense are entirely his own.

A cunning master class in why you should always trust your lawyer, and what it’ll cost you if you do.

Kirkus Reviews