Kate Wilhelm
1) Cold case
Travis Morgan's case seems open-and-shut: a plot to kill his estranged father, fundamentalist preacher Arlie Morgan, goes awry and his bullet slays an innocent bookkeeper. Two eyewitnesses seal Travis' fate. But despite damning evidence, Travis staunchly maintains his innocence. Beseeched by his anguished mother, veteran defense attorney Barbara Holloway agrees to represent Travis. With the support of her father attorney Frank Holloway and crack
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Gregarious Vegas entertainer Wally Lederer has a lucrative showbiz career, but when a childhood friend accuses him of stealing a valuable artifact, his checkered past comes back to haunt him. Wally claims he's turned his life around since spending time in the slammer for picking pockets, but will the police believe him? More important, does Barbara believe him when he pleads his case to her?
Wally swears he's innocent. But when his accuser
...Who knew that being a Good Samaritan would lead Barbara Holloway to face her biggest challenge ever: being named prime suspect in a high-profile kidnapping?
Elizabeth Kurtz has taken her small son and fled her ex-husband and his mother after finding a file of explosive material incriminating the family. Although the wealthy family employs a detective agency to find her, she manages to elude them.
Defense attorney Barbara Holloway has
...When a well-bred client hands Barbara Holloway a large retainer and asks for complete anonymity, the Oregon attorney is both intrigued and suspicious. The woman, a respected music professor and member of a group that sponsors worthy causes involving women, wants Barbara to defend Carol Fredricks, a gifted young pianist who stands accused of murdering the manager of a piano bar.
Not long ago, Barbara heard Carol play, and that is enough to
...Disappearances. Murder. The price of silence in a small town.
In dire need of a job, Todd Fielding accepts the offer to work at The Brindle Times—even if she has to move to the lackluster town of Brindle, Oregon. As she settles into her new home, Todd is fully prepared to adapt to the boredom of small-town life, but her preconceptions of Brindle are completely shattered when a local girl disappears. Even more shocking to Todd is the
...11) No defense
Lara and Vinny Jessup had a lovely May-December marriage. It renewed his lease on life after a battle with cancer, and it rescued her from a bad first marriage. And then Vinny was found dead. Initially, the sheriff in Loomis County thinks that Vinny died when his car rolled over on a bad curve on Lookout Mountain. But then he finds a gunshot wound. Was it suicide, or was it murder? With a large insurance policy as her motive, Lara could have staged
...13) The best defense
Kate Wilhelm returns to the marvelous milieu of Death Qualified with this page-turning legal thriller.
The neighborhood in Eugene, Oregon, is blue-collar; the cafe holds only three tables and four booths. But it's the only place attorney Barbara Holloway feels both productive and peaceful. Laptop computer on the table, coffee refilled regularly by the cook, Barbara gets her work done and wants for nothing more—certainly not another
...Trial lawyer Barbara Holloway has a reputation for taking on the toughest cases and winning them. But this time it looks as though she's up against an unbeatable opponent—the lawyer who taught her everything she knows.
The trial involves the murder of Gus Marchand, a hard-working, God-fearing man who is found dead on his kitchen floor. The locals cast their suspicions toward Alex Feldman, Marchand's hideously deformed neighbor, without
...Considered "one of the masters of psychological fiction in America" (San Francisco Chronicle), Kate Wilhelm sews up an irresistibly chilling puzzle that will keep listeners captivated until the very end.
When Jud Connors, a successful writer, is found murdered in his isolated cabin in the Oregon woods, his daughter Abby sees her world start to fall apart. Who could have wanted her father dead? And why? More puzzling is how anyone could have
...It started with a promise, a pact. It became a secret that no one must tell: that their parents were dead and gone, including the one they'd buried in the backyard.
When they move to a new home in Oregon, the McNair family knows they're where they belong. But when tragedy strikes the family, the children face the prospect of being separated by the state. Rather than being sent to different foster homes, the four children decide to lie. And
...17) Skeletons
Lee Donne has an eidetic memory that maintains a visual representation of everything she has ever seen. Unfortunately, this gift is useless; it certainly didn't help her in college, where she spent four years drifting from major to major with no degree in sight.
Without a job or prospects, Lee is relieved to be house-sitting at her grandfather's isolated Oregon home. But her stay soon becomes a nightmare when she is tormented by strange and
...18) Malice prepense
Forget about Grisham, Turow, and all those other scribbling ex-lawyers. The best writer of legal mysteries working today is Kate Wilhelm of Eugene, Oregon.
When he was a kid, Teddy Wendover had an accident that left him stunted at the mental age of eight. Physically, he's six-foot-two and twenty-eight years old, but he acts and thinks just like a little boy. Could this big little boy be a killer?
Someone has murdered one of Oregon's
...Quiet—that's what the town of Spender's Ferry is. The lake, the abandoned mill, the woods behind the house—everything is so rural and peaceful, not at all like the clamor and constant street noise of the Bronx. When Charlie and Constance are brought in to investigate a murder and the poisoning of a dog, they discover that the placid woods of Spender's Ferry muffle a teeming jungle of secrets—secret vices, secret pasts, secret
...Constance Leidl and Charlie Meiklejohn are an unlikely pair of detectives. He is a former arson detective; she is a psychologist. Together, the husband-and-wife team has a knack for unraveling a mystery. Seven Kinds of Death is a famous sculpture, but the name takes on new meaning when bodies start turning up at the creator's art colony.
A party launching the art tour of an old friend and the opening of her husband's condominiums turns tragic
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