Steve Martini Books In Order

Paul Madriani Books In Publication Order

  1. Compelling Evidence (1992)
  2. Prime Witness (1993)
  3. Undue Influence (1994)
  4. The Judge (1996)
  5. The Attorney (2000)
  6. The Jury (2001)
  7. The Arraignment (2002)
  8. Double Tap (2005)
  9. Shadow of Power (2008)
  10. Guardian of Lies (2009)
  11. The Rule Of Nine (2010)
  12. Trader of Secrets (2011)
  13. The Enemy Inside (2015)
  14. The Second Man (2015)
  15. Blood Flag (2016)

Paul Madriani Short Stories/Novellas In Publication Order

  1. Surfing the Panther (With: Linda Fairstein) (2015)

Standalone Novels In Publication Order

  1. The Simeon Chamber (1988)
  2. The List (1997)
  3. Critical Mass (1998)

Anthologies In Publication Order

  1. FaceOff (2014)

Paul Madriani Book Covers

Paul Madriani Short Stories/Novellas Book Covers

Standalone Novels Book Covers

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Steve Martini Books Overview

Compelling Evidence

Paul Madriani, a brilliant criminal defense lawyer, had a once promising career with a prestigious law firm, until an ill judged affair with the senior partner Ben Potter’s wife led to his resignation. Now he scrambles for work amid the ghosts of his doomed affair and the remains of a failing marriage. Then Potter is found dead, an apparent suicide. But as details come to light, the case turns from suicide to murder and the needle of suspicion points towards the victim’s seductive wife, Talia Potter. Indicted and arrested, Talia turns to Paul, her former lover, to defend her against the mounting evidence in a case that for her could result in the gas chamber

Prime Witness

Prosecutor Paul Martini thinks that he has found the murderer of six people, but when no evidence links the suspect to the last two slayings, Paul realizes that another brutal killer is still free. By the author of Compelling Evidence.

Undue Influence

With almost four million copies of his novels in print, Steve Martini has quickly joined the front ranks of psychological thriller writers, an author who John Grisham says ‘writes with the agile episodic style of a lawyer quick on his feet.’ In Undue Influence, Paul Madriani, the brilliant defense attorney readers came to admire in the New York Times best sellers Compelling Evidence and Prime Witness, finds himself in a complex web of murder and deceit this time within his own family. Paul’s wife, Nikki, has died of cancer, leaving him alone to bring up their young daughter, Sarah. On her deathbed, Nikki asked a favor of Paul: that he look after her younger sister, Laurel Vega, who is mired in a bitter child custody battle with her former husband, a powerful state legislator. The two Vegas have brawled in open court for weeks, locking horns over who will be awarded custody of their two teenage children. When Jack Vega’s new, younger wife is found slain execution style in their opulent home, Laurel Vega becomes a prime suspect. And when physical evidence closes the loop, she is arrested and charged with first degree murder. Paul, remembering his promise to his wife, has no choice but to take her case. As he scrambles to mount a defense, Madriani investigates every angle of the murder, and uncovers more than a few skeletons in the Vega family closet. He unearths a dark and enigmatic side of Laurel, an aspect he never knew existed, and with this discovery comes the most chilling question of all: Did Laurel Vega commit murder? Steve Martini holds the reader in his grip on every page of Undue Influence, with spiraling twists and turns, right down to the stunning, unexpected conclusion.

The Judge

The explosive new thriller from the New York Times bestselling author of Undue Influence An unlikely defense…
Judge Armando ‘the Coconut’ Acosta is arrested on charges of soliciting a prostitute in a sting operation for ‘johns,’ and few, including attorney Paul Madriani, who has a long history of enmity with The Judge, are sympathetic. When the young female decoy who snared The Judge is found brutally murdered, Acosta is the prime suspect. Abandoned by his friends, Acosta asks Paul to save his career from impending doom. Paul is reluctant, but when Acosta’s original defense lawyer is forced off the case by a zealous district attorney looking for revenge, Paul steps forward to defend The Judge. With his client now charged with murder, Paul faces the most daunting, disturbing, and complex case of his career. Packed with nonstop drama and a cast of richly drawn characters that have come to be Steve Martini’s trademark, The Judge delivers a decisive thumbs up verdict.

The Attorney

Paul Madriani is back as both defense attorney and sleuth in this riveting new legal thriller by the New York Times bestselling author of The Judge and Undue Influence.’Riveting…
a suspenseful tale, right up to the satisfying climax,’ wrote Publishers Weekly in praise of The Judge. ‘Legal thrillers don’t get much better than this.’ Kirkus Reviews hailed Undue Influence as ‘the courtroom novel of the year.’ Now Martini delivers Paul Madriani’s most challenging case yet: one pitting a drug addicted mother against her daughter’s newly rich grandfather in a contentious custody case that leads to criminal accusations and ultimately murder. Having moved to San Diego to be closer to the woman in his life, Madriani takes on the case of Jonah Hale, an elderly man in terrible straits. As a result of their only child Jessica’s longtime drug addiction, Jonah and his wife have been raising their eight year old granddaughter, Amanda. On the heels of Jonah’s multimillion dollar state lottery win, Jessica revives her interest in mothering. When Jonah won’t deal maternal rights for a mega bucks payoff Jessica plays dirty: she accuses the old man of having sexually abused her as a child and similarly abusing Amanda now. Enter Zo Suade a flamboyant, feminist activist with a penchant for making the objects of custody battles and their mother/plaintiffs ‘disappear.’ True to form, a week after Zo takes on Jessica’s case, mother and daughter vanish. When Zo’s body turns up, Jonah becomes the prime suspect. And Madriani is the man who can prove his innocence. Filled with action in and out of court, rich in characters with motives obvious and subtle, The Attorney marks the much anticipated return of Paul Madriani.

The Jury

Lawyer Paul Madriani is called on to defend a brilliant research physician who just may be a killer in the most daunting capital case of Madriani’s career.

Paul Madriani has ample reason to suspect he’s representing a guilty man. Dr. David Crone, a respected medical researcher and principal in mapping the human genome, is charged with the murder of a young colleague: Kalista Jordan, an African American research physician whose dismembered body was found in a nearby bay.

Madriani’s defense is hindered by the secrecy surrounding Crone’s research which has involved his controversial use of genetic racial profiling. The murdered woman had filed charges of sexual harassment against Crone. Paul is left to piece together a defense while Crone and his colleagues conceal parts of the puzzle.

When a key witness for the prosecution ends up dead, Crone’s acquittal is all but assured. Paul’s nagging doubts concerning his client are answered with a stunning revelation and a shattering climax.

The Arraignment

A riveting new novel by the bestselling author of The Jury.

Defense attorney Paul Madriani tackles the most challenging case of his career the chilling murder of a friend on a crowded city street in this brilliantly suspenseful new novel in the bestselling series.

After a friend and fellow lawyer is killed along with his client in a hail of gunfire outside the federal courthouse in San Diego, attorney Paul Madriani takes on another client, who, he suspects, is involved in double murder. Madriani wants to know who killed his friend and why. He is torn by questions of conflict between his duty to a client who may be a killer and the need to know the truth. Madriani wonders whether he himself had been marked for death, only to have a friend die in his place.

Madriani is drawn into a vortex of crime that spans the Americas. Without realizing, he is suddenly riding the crest of a dangerous wave involving a family of wealthy international developers and people who murder for money. When the police focus on the wrong motive for the killings, thereby threatening to close the book on another unsolved crime, Madriani sets off on a deadly quest that takes him from California to the steaming jungles of Mexico and the ancient cultures of the Yucat n. There he discovers that while death may be driven by distant and exotic motives, the killer, like a serpent, lies much closer at hand. /Content /EditorialReview EditorialReview Source Amazon. com Review /Source Content When Paul Madriani’s old friend, flamboyant criminal defense lawyer Nick Rush, is gunned down on the streets of San Diego along with a client, Madriani sets out to find the killer. He follows the trail through shady real estate dealings, cross border smuggling, political corruption, and a nasty fight between Rush’s ex and his young trophy wife over a hefty life insurance policy. Eventually the case leads Madriani to the Yucatan Peninsula near Canc n, where the last third of the book takes place a dandy locale for skullduggery, even if it does make you suspect that the author thought up the plot while vacationing there.

The Arraignment is marred by some sloppy, foggy headed writing ‘The neighborhood exudes the kind of aura picked up by a sixth sense that lingers and lifts the hair on the back of my neck’, and the plot, after its initial bang, sags for a while before it gets moving again. However, the sheer vigor of Martini’s prose, his densely inventive plotting, and his sharply drawn characters carry you happily, tensely along. The book’s action scenes including a hand to hand fight in a shabby apartment and an unforgettable poolside shooting at a Canc n resort are told in fresh, vivid prose that unfolds with hypnotic clarity. And the denouement is great fun, although the complex plot takes a lot of explaining at the end. Martini’s not perfect, but he’s still one of the best legal/adventure thriller writers going. Nicholas H. Allison

Double Tap

Paul Madriani’s defense of a soldier on trial for murder and the explosive government secrets it could reveal propel Steve Martini’s latest thriller.

The Arraignment, Steve Martini’s most recent bestseller featuring defense attorney Paul Madriani, has proved his most popular yet. Now Madriani is faced with daunting ballistics evidence: a so called ‘Double Tap‘ two bullet wounds tightly grouped in the victim’s head, shots that could have been made only by a crack marksman. Paul’s client, Emiliano Ruiz, is an enigma a career soldier who refuses to discuss his past though it is clear that he is a battle tested pro. Ruiz is accused of killing a beautiful businesswoman and guru of a high tech software empire catering to the military. A key to the case: the murder weapon is one used solely in special operations, where the ‘Double Tap‘ has become the signature of the most skilled assassins.

Ruiz is sitting on secrets there’s a seven year gap on his military risumi, for which Madriani can find no details. And, more troubling, he discovers that the victim and her company were involved in a controversial government computer program designed to combat terrorists. Madriani finds himself in a deadly legal quagmire with a client who is unwilling to cooperate and prosecutors who stonewall his every question about the victim’s shadowy business and his client’s past. Justice, and the unvarnished truth, has never been so elusive or so dangerous.

Shadow of Power

The echoes of a murder reach deep into the halls of the U.S. Supreme Court in this electrifying new thriller featuring defense attorney Paul Madriani from New York Times bestselling author Steve Martini.

Terry Scarborough is a legal scholar and provocateur who craves headline making celebrity, but with his latest book he may have gone too far. In it he resurrects forgotten language in the U.S. Constitution and hints at a missing letter of Thomas Jefferson’s that threatens to divide the nation. Then Scarborough is brutally murdered and a young man with dark connections is charged. What looks like an open and shut case to most people, doesn’t to defense attorney Paul Madriani. He believes there is much more to the case, and that the defendant is a pawn caught in the middle, being scapegoated by circumstance.

As the trial spirals toward its conclusion, Madriani and his partner Harry Hinds race to find the missing Jefferson letter and the secrets it holds about slavery and scandal at the time of our nation’s founding and the very reason Scarborough was killed. Madriani’s chase takes him from the tension filled courtroom in California to the trail of a Supreme Court justice now suddenly in hiding and lays bare the soaring political stakes for a seat on the High Court, in a country divided, and under the Shadow of Power.

Guardian of Lies

Defense attorney Paul Madriani gets caught in a web of deceit and murder involving Cold War secrets, a rare coin dealer who once worked for the CIA, and a furious assassin in one of the most entertaining novels yet in this New York Times bestselling series.

A woman pauses in the hallway of a darkened San Diego beach house at night listening for just the right moment when she can flee before her companion notices that she’s gone.

A man outside watches the same mansion, waiting for a sign that he can enter on his mission of blood and carnage.

So begins this riveting new tale about Paul Madriani and his latest case that of Katia, a woman accused of an unlikely crime a trial that will unravel a careful but horrifying conspiracy. Madriani soon realizes that he’s signed onto something much more sinister than a botched heist. As he searches for the truth that will clear Katia’s name, he finds himself on a path that takes him from Southern California to Costa Rica, and, ultimately, to a secret buried since Castro’s rise to power.

Together with his partner, Harry Hinds, Madriani must piece together the threads of a decades old conspiracy involving priceless gold coins, an aging American spy, a disaffected Russian soldier, and a forgotten weapon from the days of JFK and the Cuban Missile Crisis. As the separate strands of the story come together, Madriani finds information that will ultimately lead him to the one person who holds the key to it all: a man some call ‘The Guardian of Lies.’

In this fascinating thriller from New York Times bestselling author Steve Martini, Paul Madriani faces his most challenging and most urgent case yet, a breathless story that combines fact and fiction and will hold readers captive until its final, explosive conclusion.

The Rule Of Nine

The Old Weatherman dreams of a plan that could be his swan song, an attack to drive a stake through the heart of the right wing establishment and bury it for good. Now he’s found the money, the ideal weapon, and the professional who knows how to use it. And he has set his sights on the perfect target at the very seat of the United States government, in the heart of downtown Washington. It will be a strike heard round the world. San Diego defense attorney Paul Madriani is still reeling from the trauma of a near nuclear explosion he helped avert at the naval base in Coronado. Threatened by federal authorities to keep quiet about the close call in California, Madriani is now faced with a new problem in the steely eyed and alluring Joselyn Cole, a weapons control expert, who believes he has to go public with what he knows if they have any hope of stopping a similar event in the future. But Madriani has been linked to the murder of a Washington, D.C., political staffer, and authorities believe a shadowy figure called Liquida a hired assassin known as ‘the Mexicutioner’ may be responsible. And this man, as the last survivor of the attack in San Diego, might be driven by a bizarre and horrifying star crossed vendetta, and might now be looking for Madriani himself. What Madriani and Cole begin to fear is that the Old Weatherman and this madman have joined forces and intend to pull the city and the country into a vortex of terror before Madriani and Cole can find answers to the enigma that is ‘The Rule Of Nine.’

Trader of Secrets

Defense attorney Paul Madriani is embroiled in a case as perilous as any he has ever faced: one that involves an angry killer who will stop at nothing short of vengeance, and two missing NASA scientists who are holding secrets that a hostile government desperately wants to purchase in blood if they must. Madriani’s daughter, Sarah, has evaded the man known as Liquida, who has stalked her all the way across the country. For her own safety, she is being kept under armed guard on a farm in Ohio. But one morning, itching for a predawn run to shake off the tension that has grown in the hours she’s spent waiting for word from her father, Sarah slips from her ring of protection. What she doesn’t know is that at the same moment her assailant is outside, waiting patiently in the dark. Meanwhile in California, two men in a parked car argue over millions in cash that could be slipping through their fingers and a scheme involving government technology for sale that could rock the world. Paul Madriani, his companion Joselyn Cole, and his longtime law partner, Harry Hinds, track Liquida, not knowing that their quest will carry them deep into the vortex of international terror. It is a journey that will lead them toward a bizarre and cruel twist of nature and the ultimate weapon of mass destruction. From the nation’s capital to California, from Bangkok to Paris and the jungles of Mexico, Madriani and his party race against time to find Liquida and the scientist who is the ‘Trader of Secrets‘ before he can unleash the weapon that could set the world ablaze.

The Simeon Chamber

As a young woman and her attorney, Sam Bogardus, attempt to search out her natural father, with only an ancient parchment for a clue, they discover a deadly web of art theft, intrigue, conspiracy, and murder. PW.

The List

A bold and successful scheme to outwit the biggest players in publishing and film animates this novel by the bestselling author of The Judge a suspenseful thriller in which the price of fame becomes terror. Gable Cooper has penned a novel to kill for. Six million dollars in book and film rights are looming just off the table for this unknown author. But there is a problem: Gable Cooper doesn’t exist. Abby Chandlis is an attorney turned novelist and the creator of Gable Cooper. In an age when glamour, not grammar, is often the secret to selling books, Abby has an intriguing plan to keep her writing career alive: find a charismatic male face to pose as the phantom author for the knock dead thriller she has written. Jack Jermaine is a man with dangerous good looks and a shadowy past. Trained by the military to kill, his obsession is to pen a blockbuster book. He has a trunk filled with rejected manuscripts and a gnawing problem that has turned him bitter: Jack can’t write. Desperate to find a man to play the role of Gable Cooper, Abby is about to give up when Jack forces his way into her life. Reluctantly she is convinced that Jack’s humor and looks will clinch success for her novel. She uses her legal wits and makes a deal with the devil. Jack becomes Gable Cooper. When Jack is propelled into the orbit of celebrity, Abby finds herself at once seduced and trapped by her own creation. Success turns to terror. The story careens from the Pacific Northwest to New York City and finally through the islands of the Caribbean as Abby races for her life to the one person she can trust the one person who can prove to the world that she wrote the novel, and put an end to the nightmare that was once her dream, the dream of making The List.

Critical Mass

Steve Martini weaves a story based on today’s fears and tomorrow’s headlines riveting in its realism, genuine in its characters. Jocelyn ‘Joss’ Cole, a burned out public defender from L.A., has opted for a quieter life in the San Juan Islands of Washington State. Joss has no significant clients other than a group of commercial fisherman suffering from a strange and serious illness, a condition that doctors cannot diagnose, and which Joss believes has an industrial cause. Then into her office comes Dean Belden, a well heeled client in search of a lawyer to help him set up a business in the islands. Within days Belden is subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury. Less than an hour after testifying, and before Joss can discover what happened in the secrecy of the grand jury room, Belden dies in a fiery explosion of his float plane on Seattle’s Lake Union. Gideon Van Ry is a nuclear fission expert and a scholar in residence at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California. One of his duties is to update the Center’s database, an extensive catalog listing fissionable materials and weapons of mass destruction. Gideon is troubled by the apparent failure to account for two small tactical nuclear devices missing from a storage facility in the former Soviet Union. The two weapons were last seen in packing crates, to be shipped to an American company called Belden Electronics. Gideon has been unable to locate this firm, and now he is left with only one possible lead, the lawyer who incorporated the company Jocelyn Cole. Fraught with tension and suspense, Critical Mass is Steve Martini at his electrifying best. It is the story of what can happen in a world where private hate and public apathy combine to uncork the sleeping but deadly genie of nuclear terror.

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