Considering the competition, long hours, and pressure on new attorneys, the suicide of promising young lawyer Sari Bashir is not a complete shock. What is disconcerting is that once evidence arises indicating that the death may have been a murder, the most likely suspects are the prestigious partners and attorneys of the elite law firm of Warner and Olsen.
I know a former trial lawyer who gave it up to write courtroom thrillers. He claims he prefers the fictional kind because he gets to control the judge, the lawyers, the witnesses and, best of all, the outcome. I think of him with envy whenever I have to deal with In Re the Estate of Mendel Sofer. It's definitely real, and I've long since lost control. Back in the beginning, back when all I knew was that an 82-year-old widower named Mendel Sofer had died of a heart attack, it had seemed a simple case. Indeed, those were the very words Phil Rosenberg used when he called. "It's a simple case, Rachel," he assured me. "Even better, you'll be doing a mitzvah."
KRL reviewed a lot of really good and great books in 2013, but we decided to give our best shot at choosing our top 5 of the year--some of us cheated a little, but here are our choices! And if you are an author who is not on the list, take heart--like I said, they were all good books!
