Product DescriptionDefense 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. About the AuthorSteve Martini is the author of numerous New York Times bestsellers, including The Rule of Nine, Guardian of Lies, Shadow of Power, and others featuring defense attorney Paul Madriani. Martini has practiced law in California in both state and federal courts, and has served as an administrative law judge and supervising hearing officer. He lives in the Pacific Northwest.

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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...

A series of bizarre murders leads to the arrest of a prime suspect and sparks the most explosive trial in lawyer Paul Madriani's career. By the author of *Compelling Evidence. *Reprint. *PW. * ### From Publishers Weekly "The ugly marketplace of justice"--as one character terms the judicial process--is scrutinized with a riveting, you-are-there immediacy in the new legal procedural by the author of Compelling Evidence. When attorney Paul Madriani offers to assist a friend--the county's ailing district attorney, who subsequently dies--in investigating six brutal killings, he becomes entangled in a series of machinations that threaten his career and even his private life. Though Martini's plotting proves ingenious (the story is capped off by a nail-biting encounter in a darkened courtroom), the legal maneuvers themselves take center stage here. From the crime scene--the banks of California's Putah Creek--to a deceptively simple arrest to fascinating pre-trial scheming, Martini packs his novel with the quotidian details of the wheels of justice--and the numerous cogs therein. Madriani's first-person, present-tense narration invigorates the often intricate proceedings with first-rate wisecracks and one-liners. His character descriptions are by turns pithy and funny (frequently both): the prosecuting attorney "looks like nothing so much as Robert Duvall's incarnation of the Great Santini"; the county's female victim-witness coordinator is "the crime victim's answer to Don Corleone in drag . . . known as 'Attila the Hen.' " Prime is indeed the word for this involving read. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. ### From School Library Journal YA-When Paul Madriani agrees to fill in temporarily as Special County Prosecutor, he has no idea that he will become involved in a serial murder case. The search for the "Putah Creek Killer" leads to the arrest of a college security guard, Andre Iganovich. Adrian Chambers, the defense counsel, has a shady professional past and a deep-seated dislike for Madriani, who was instrumental in the attorney's previous suspension from the bar association. As the evidence unfolds, discrepancies between the first two double murders and the third one become apparent, leading the prosecution to believe that a copy-cat murderer is on the loose. Threats against Madriani's family, legal posturing, the identification of a witness to the third set of murders, and a killer's desperation combine to produce a thrilling story. *Grace Baun, R.E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA* Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

SUMMARY: 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.